LONDON:  The law in England and Wales offers “inadequate” protection to postal workers who are attacked by dogs, a report says.

The report, commissioned by Royal Mail, recommends a change in law to help deal with the owners of dogs who attack.

The report points out that currently action cannot be taken if an attack takes place on private property.

The number of attacks ranges from Royal Mail’s figure of 3,000 a year to the 5,000 suggested by the workers’ union.

The Communication Workers Union welcomed the report, saying it backed moves to get serious on punishment.

Paul Coleman, a former postman who was attacked in Sheffield by two Staffordshire bull terriers, told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) : “It has left me with really bad scarring and 27% disabled for life.”

He said: “It was outside someone’s house. They came with a garden rake and hit the dogs with that. They gave me a hammer and I hit the dogs in the head until the shaft of the hammer snapped...a man came from an engineering firm with a solid steel six-foot iron bar, hit it three times on the back and the dogs never let go.”