please empty your brain below
Death by a hundred cuts, and investor profit pursuit that involves figures with a few more 0s on the end. We are heading for a country in which service will be almost entirely replaced by business.

Waterhouse | 25.08.14 - 8:02 a.m. | #

I a few months time they will find empty boxes at 09.00 am, and 07.00 am. For most people another day is being added to the delivery period.

The with empty boxes, they will rationalise!

Steve Barker | Homepage | 25.08.14 - 8:13 a.m. | #

Excellent news.
A company responding to changes in public behaviour and seeking to use its assets in a logical and efficient manner rather than pissing money up the wall.
More please.

Anne Onne | 25.08.14 - 8:45 a.m. | #

As Steve Baker has said, once this move has been in place for a while they will undoubtedly be in a position to remove post boxes that are no longer used. Cut backs through the back door.

Neil | Homepage | 25.08.14 - 8:56 a.m. | #

The real problem is that there will be no way of knowing whether a box has been cleared for the day.

The notice seems to be standard as I have the same one on my local box in Berkshire. It seems odd that the collection time is earlier on a Saturday than on weekdays.

Martin | 25.08.14 - 9:11 a.m. | #

It seems to me that, at a stroke, they will be removing the distinction between 1st and 2nd class postage - no doubt they'll still carry on with the 'fiction' of 1st class. Or that by Xmas there will be a single class but higher than 2nd class costs currently.

B | 25.08.14 - 10:20 a.m. | #

Why is it that when it comes to measuring 'benefit' it's always done in money?

Surely one of the 'benefits' of the Post Office was a Service which Benefitted most of the community. Only bean counters can't quantify that on a Spreadsheet.

Gah!

Bronchitikat | Homepage | 25.08.14 - 11:43 a.m. | #

Postal operatives on their delivery rounds emptying boxes is surely nothing new. In 1972 I spent several months working as a postman and I had to collect from 2 boxes on my second delivery round. I was told that if I got to the box before the collection time, I had to wait till it had passed. But in those days, as DG said, you got 2 deliveries a day and one on a Saturday, and several collections a day from most boxes including on Sundays.

Charles | 25.08.14 - 11:48 a.m. | #

Really interesting about the lack of a postcode query database. My 16 yr old son is involved in Young Rewired State which has recently had its annual festival of code (this year at the University of Plymouth). About a thousand under 18 yr old coders spend a week using government open source data to develop useful apps and the like (e.g. combining GPS data and crime statistics to come up with safe route software). Developing something like this would have been right up their street. Maybe next year!

Joan | 25.08.14 - 11:49 a.m. | #

Martin at 9.11 will be reassured by mention of an 'indicator tab' indicating whether the collection has taken place (source: Royal Mail press release cited in the BBC story to which DG has provided a link).

Roehamster | 25.08.14 - 12:49 p.m. | #

FWIW - here in Oz they are talking about cutting delivery to three days a week. We have far, far fewer mail boxes than you as well. This isn't an argument in favour of your (or our) cuts, but a comment on the evils of privatisation. One of the things we love about the UK are the omnipresent post boxes, each with its unique identity (yet to spot an Edward VIII!), some cut into the walls in tiny corners of little lanes. Here, unless you are in a major city, you usually have to find a big shopping mall or post office outlet (already privatised, sigh) to post anything. And the boxes are frankly dull, too.

Antipodean | 25.08.14 - 2:19 p.m. | #

You think that's bad? I've found it increasingly difficult to get a good telegram service. When will the government sort this out?

Jim | 25.08.14 - 3:44 p.m. | #

@roehamster
Pillar boxes always used to have a tab stating "next collection".
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/E8R_Door.jpg

This one shows the next collection to be No 4 (it is also, I've just noticed, a rare Edward VIII one)


Of late they have only been changed after the last collection, som only need to show the day (i.e if it says "WED" on a Tuesday there are no more collections today)

timbo | 25.08.14 - 6:11 p.m. | #

Efficiency has to be expected of course, but I hope we don't eventually see Postmen RUNNING from house to house to make their deliveries on "Target".. They are trying to squeeze more and more blood out of the rest of us, and even Thatcher's own middle class will eventually become victims of this slippery slope. I don't see happy times ahead, if things continue this way, and power slips into fewer and fewer greedy hands. A new age of serfdom beckons, if we're not careful.

Alex McKenna | 25.08.14 - 6:26 p.m. | #

If it's any consolation the same sorts of things are happening with postal service in the U.S.

Mail left with rural postal carriers used to go out that day, but now does not get "on the truck" until the next day.

Rural postmen used to "cover" for those of us without postal scales at home, would put our pkgs. onto the truck the same day they picked it up, and then would tell us how much we owe. Not anymore. If I leave a pkg in my mailbox for pickup, by the time he weighs it and gives me the bill, it could be five or six days delay on the pkg.

Postal drop boxes are emptied earlier in the day.

Service-window hours at Post Offices are being cut.

| 25.08.14 - 6:42 p.m. | #

I'll add to the comment above that some Post Offices are being outright closed up.

| 25.08.14 - 6:43 p.m. | #

The post box outside Britain's most northerly Post Office, on Unst, one of the Shetland isles, has a last collection time of 9.30am (including Saturdays). So you'll be able to post a letter there later than you can in central London, and it'll still arrive the next day.
(I'm sure it won't be long before they scale that back.)

martin | 26.08.14 - 9:20 a.m. | #

To find your nearest postbox, there's this site: http://dracos.co.uk/made/nearest-postbox/ - the text at the bottom of the page says it's made with data from the Royal Mail, so quite why this database has never been made properly available on the Royal Mail's website I have no idea. I also don't know if the data on this map is kept up to date or not, but it *does* currently give last posting times.

Rich Thomas | 26.08.14 - 12:59 p.m. | #

Maybe there is scope for an unusual and unique post box series on DG. I can't be the only tourist who collects photos of unusual or particularly obscure post boxes ... Can I?

Antipodean | 26.08.14 - 4:16 p.m. | #

Ooh, I like that idea, Antipodean.

And also telephone boxes: I'd live to know if there is any usage data available. Again, odd locations, seemingly abandoned boxes - yes please!

(I am reminded of the phone box cum Book Exchange I came across in rural Herts. Lovely, and much more loved than most I see in London.)

EskimoPie | 26.08.14 - 4:47 p.m. | #

Came across two 're-purposed' phone boxes in one section of the Essex Way the other day. One had been turned into a well looked after Essex Way information point by the pub across the road in Fuller Street. The other, in Terling, housed a defibrillator. Nice to see the old things being put to use in an imaginative manner.
There has just got to be a web site dedicated to recycled phone boxes - but I'm resisting temptation!

Rob Gill | 26.08.14 - 11:30 p.m. | #

The notice says 'no earlier than' 9.00am, which really is a weasly expression that could actually mean any time during the day, including as late as the existing 5.30pm collection. The novelty of this arrangement is the lack of any precision about when the collection will actually take place. It's unlikely to be as early as 9.30, but we'll all have to behave as if it might be, just in case. Otherwise we risk being faced with the 'hard luck you've missed it!' tag on the post box, rather than the more informative 'next collection will be at'.

ActonMan | 26.08.14 - 11:38 p.m. | #

ActionMan: The point of this is that these collections will be made by posties in between making their deliveries. In that case the collection could well be shortly after 9am, not just an undefined time possibly in the afternoon.

Jim | 27.08.14 - 1:41 p.m. | #

One day last week I received my post at 5.35pm. Is that a record?

Karl, Dover | 27.08.14 - 2:46 p.m. | #

I'm assuming that post people will collect the mail from these boxes after they've done their deliveries when their bag/trolley is empty, which will make the collection somewhat later in the day depending on how much they've had to deliver. Obviously the overall intention is to spread the delivery and collection of post more evenly throughout the day to be more 'cost effective', and to be fair, it was never really practical nor that efficient to deliver everyone's post simultaneously first thing in the morning and to collect from every pillar box at exactly 5.30 in the afternnon. They're clearly moving towards a system whereby they can wholeheartedly pledge to deliver and collect our post 'sometime' - a performance target they should be able to meet, so it'll be bonuses all round!

ActonMan | 27.08.14 - 2:53 p.m. | #

Aargh!! You've started a post with the word "so"! Where's this craze come from? Everyone's suddenly doing it. So what?

Andrew S | 27.08.14 - 11:26 p.m. | #

Rich Thomas: That website http://dracos.co.uk/made/nearest-postbox/ does look useful for post box locations. I found a couple near me that I hadn't previously known about.

But the collection times can't be relied upon. Indeed, the provider gives himself/herself a let-out by saying 'Old data, may be wrong'.

A shame. I wonder if this will be updated with the new timing rules. Then it will be REALLY helpful.

Petras409 | 28.08.14 - 7:10 p.m. | #

If we actually used these post boxes there would be no need for the cuts. But the thing is we are not!
It might sound like a thousand cuts but when something is not being used why should it still exist? Same thing happened with public phoneboxes, only those still being used or were requested by councils were not removed. Because we stopped using them.

Kevin | 31.08.14 - 7:48 p.m. | #

So September 15th came round, and the sticker disappeared, and by 5pm the last collection of the day still hadn't been made.

Postponed start, or a rethink of priorities?

diamond geezer | Homepage | 15.09.14 - 9:44 p.m. | #











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