The Post Office Delivery to your Mailbox

The Post Office Delivery to your Postbox

As part of its mandate, the Royal Mail is duty bound to deliver your post to your mailbox and, as part of their privacy policy, it is illegal for them to knowingly deliver your mail to somebody else’s address without your express permission.

To help facilitate the delivery of your mail, it is the responsibility of the property owner to ensure that the letterbox is of a suitable size, in an easily accessible location that is safe and secure, and that it is kept suitably clean. It does not matter if the mailbox is attached to the front door, a wall or gate, or if it is a standalone unit at the bottom of a very long driveway (as may be the case in rural areas). In either case, it is important that your local postman can access your mailbox in a safe and secure manner. If you own the type of mailbox that requires a key in order to not just collect post but also to deliver it (such as a mailbox that can hold medium sized parcels), then Royal Mail has a system whereby you can provide them with a key to the box. This system means the chances of you having to visit and potentially queue up at the local sorting office to pick up a parcel is greatly reduced.

It is advisable to clear your mailbox as often as possible, ideally daily so that a build up of post does not accrue inside the unit. If you are going to be away from your property for a period of time, such as for a family holiday, then you can contact the Post Office who will hold back delivering any post during this time and instead deliver it upon your return.

It’s easy to take Royal Mail and the services they provide for granted. We expect our post to be delivered daily and in a timely manner, and more often than not this is exactly what happens. Occasionally, however, problems do occur and items we were expecting may not be delivered to us either when we were expecting them or, worse still, not at all. In the unfortunate event of something like this happening, the Post Office will look into the problem and will try to trace the missing mail.

The service provided by Royal Mail and the Post office is certainly important, but with the growth of alternative forms of communication such as email and text, what was once a thriving service is slowly being pushed out of the reach of many people. It’s quite common nowadays to hear about the closure of rural post offices and the price of postage increasing regularly. But despite this, the Royal Mail has an essential role in our everyday lives and it would certainly be a shame if we were to lose it.