Bristol raises postal account minimum: Vivien Goldsmith and Maria Scott discover what this week's base rate cut will mean for borrowers and for those with money to invest

BRISTOL & WEST Building Society is raising the minimum investment on its postal account from pounds 2,000 to pounds 10,000.

The move follows several weeks of administrative problems when many would-be account holders had to wait more than two weeks to see if their account application forms had been processed.

Bristol & West says that its attractive rates have drawn in three times the numbers of new savers in January that it was getting at the end of last year. The society now has 35,000 postal account holders.

According to a spokesman for the society, all applications sent in since 21 January have been acknowledged within 24 hours.

Those customers can expect to receive their passbooks within two weeks of lodging their applications. All documentation relating to applications submitted before 18 January is now said to be complete. However, people whose applications were sent in between 18 and 21 January may still not have received an acknowledgement.

A spokesman said: 'By the end of next week we should be all up to date. We have been caught out by our own success.'