Roundabout route for traffic lights

Traffic lights are one of the more unusual items found by postal staff

Postal workers in Belfast are waiting for the owner of a set of traffic lights found at a sorting office to come forward.

The temporary lights - the sort used at roadworks - were packed in a box and wrapped in brown paper.

They did not have any forwarding name or address included on the packaging.

The Royal Mail says the package arrived in the spring at its National Return Letter Centre.

It is one of the more unusual items to turn up, but staff at the centre have become used to dealing with strange items.

Live mice and scorpions have recently been discovered there.

Royal Mail's head of small business, Alison White, said: "So far we have not received any calls from anyone who is waiting to have a set of traffic lights - perhaps they are stuck in traffic."

The Belfast-based operation employs more than 300 people, sifting through letters with incomplete addresses, or where the addressee has moved, and trying to return them to the senders.

About 322 million items each year are classed as undeliverable.

Although 250 million of these have a return address, the rest are sent to the return letter centre.

Other unusual finds have included FA Cup Final tickets, large amounts of cash, a cat and even a snake.

Letters to Santa Claus also end up in Belfast.

Each is opened and the writer receives a card with Santa's address and postcode on the back, to encourage children to get into the habit of putting their own address on their mail.