Why is Royal Mail reducing our village mail collections?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/new ... llections/

A NOTICE has appeared on our central village postbox in Daglingworth advising that from Monday, August 23 the only collection will be at 9am (and 7am on Saturdays).

The present afternoon collection time is 4.30pm which allows one to respond to mail received in the morning delivery, which, as a charity volunteer answering correspondence most days of the week, I find very useful.

The Royal Mail message states that the change to remove the afternoon collection is ‘In order to improve efficiency…’ which, being translated literally, implies cost-saving for Royal Mail rather than improved efficiency for postal users!


In making this service reduction there is also an environmental penalty.

In place of one Royal Mail vehicle collecting afternoon mail from a sizeable round of the local villages, customers who need to post in the afternoon will have to drive to a late collection box - in our case Stratton or Cirencester - increasing traffic and pollution.

Royal Mail’s code of business standards recognises that ‘we have a special role to play in helping the communities that we serve’.

It also states that ‘We are committed to taking account of the environmental and ethical effects of our policies in our planning and operations’.

It is not difficult to understand the commercial benefits accruing to Royal Mail but have they considered properly the needs of their customers and the environmental damage of this change to the community they seek to serve?

John Symons

Daglingworth

Cirencester

[Deadly]

The public need to get used to this as the vast majority of boxes will be morning collections eventually. Later collections will be restricted to boxes at Post Offices and some busier ones at supermarkets and train stations etc.

[clashcityrocker]

Where it says the only collection is at 9am that is factually incorrect.
Some boxes will still be emptied in the afternoon - it depends where they are on the route of the delivery person.

If the person is getting a morning delivery then they should count their blessings.
Half the postround probably doesn't get their mail until after midday.

[logicalthinker]

This happened in my village some time ago and you just get used to it. There is one priority Post Box in the centre of the village (outside the Post Office) that gets emptied at 5pm but all of the others can be emptied any time after 9am. You get to know which ones are typically emptied early and which ones are emptied a bit later, although that's no guarantee. It helps if the postie changes the day of the week token so you at least know when it's been emptied (and they usually do).

It's not my place to say what is and isn't urgent mail, but the way his letter is written implies that immediate responses from the charity are desirable rather than critical. If that's the case then the only consequence is that they will take 24 hours longer to arrive, whereas if they are urgent then you just have to make that journey to the priority post box.