An agent visiting a flat with its owner, who hoped to rent it out, was confronted by a masked armed robber.

The two men disturbed Marek Jozwiak, 45, after he broke into the unoccupied flat.

He had pulled up the floorboards in order to break in through the ceiling into the post office below.

Jozwiak, of Kempston, Bedfordshire, was jailed for six years and now faces deportation back to his home country of Poland.

Prosecutor Charles Ward-Jackson told Luton crown court that last September, the postmaster who owned the flat took the agent to see the property.

Mr Ward-Jackson said that the defendant came out of the kitchen, wearing dark clothes and a balaclava: “He went back into the kitchen and reappeared with a revolver which he pointed at the postmaster and he left.”

At his home, police found messages in a notebook that read: “If you do as I say you will be all right”, and “Where is the safe?”

Judge Andrew Bright QC said: “It is fortunate that your plan was frustrated when the postmaster and the estate agent came upon you.

“Your intention was to tie up members of staff having lowered yourself in and held them captive.”

The agent was not identified in local press reporting of the case.

Armed robbery foiled by Kempston postmaster and estate agent