Royal Mail ceases deliveries to rural areas?

[MINESAPINT]

Does this mean no more bills?

[eccentric_emma]

if thats so i'm moving to a rural area right away!

[ina]

Where did you read or hear that?

I did hear once about a particular village they didn't deliver to - for health and safety reasons (the road's too bad for the postie's back)...

[marshlander]

[quote="ina"]Where did you read or hear that? [quote]

Looks like it effects specific North Yorkshire and Cleeveland villages but could be 'the thin end of thw wedge'

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/3 ... ral_homes/

We missed a Royal Mail Parcel delivery on Tuesday. Had to pick it up from a post office 5 miles away, not even our local post office Postcard said we could have a redelivery at no extra cost but when we phoned we were told we had to collect. mmmm
We're rural but only 1.5 miles from a big viilage.

[contadino]

I can't really see why this would be such a big issue. We have no postal service as we live in the countryside. We have a postbox in town, and every Saturday when we go into town for the market we check for post.

It keeps postage costs down and really isn't too much of an inconvenience. In fact, it's quite convenient, as parcels get signed for by the people at the shop.

Also, those nasty final demands become unreasonable - "pay within 7 days" doesn't exist here. When I was tying up my affair with HMRC, I refused to heed any of their deadlines, and explained the situation and they were far more reasonable. There's no point sending me a letter saying pay within 14 days, when the post takes 4 days each way, and I only pickup my mail weekly.

[Masco&Bongo]

I can't really see why this would be such a big issue. We have no postal service as we live in the countryside. We have a postbox in town, and every Saturday when we go into town for the market we check for post.

If our stuff isn't delivered it goes to the local sorting office. The local sorting office in itself is rural, and is a half an hour drive from our village. Added to that, it's only open for picking up parcels from 9.30am - 11.30am during the week and 7am to 8.30am on a Saturday...

Both of us work full time, so if we need to pick something up, we have to make a special trip out of our way at a stupid time on a Saturday morning

Now if, like you, we could have a postbox that we could mostly access ourselves in the village, that would be fine and I'd much prefer it.

(Oh yes, and our actual post only turns up between 3pm and 4pm.....)

[ina]

I wouldn't mind getting it in the village (4 miles), either - if it was in normal shop opening hours.... I have to go there twice a week anyway. However, going to the "local" sorting office - like M&B, I'd find that a bit much. Especially if it meant taking time off work to get there!

[Clara]

We don't have delivery either and pick our mail up once a week from the PO on market day. Our local PO is about 5km away and is only open mon-fri 11:30-12:30, really it isn't a problem. Like Contadin@ said, it keeps costs down.

I find this to be one of the main differences between living here and living in the UK: in the UK people complain about higher costs, council taxes etc but wouldn't entertain going without their "vital" services (ishly-minded people excepted). Here people pay far far less in council tax (about 15% of the UK), but they carry their rubbish to communal bins, sweep outside their own front door etc....sure some of your taxes are wasted and a lot of the "costs" are actually about returning profits for privatised industries, perhaps we should have fought harder to stop that happening, but you can't have your cake and eat it.

[MINESAPINT]

Just to answer an earlier question: I heard about it in a letter from Redcar & Cleveland Council delivered yesterday. The council are attending a meeting and are intending to challenge the decision.

Our local sorting office is 10 miles or so away, a round trip that will use the best part of a gallon of diesel multiplied by the thousands of people affected and we are supposed to be concerned about the environment!

[contadino]

Our mailbox is in the lobby of a shop. You get given a key to the outside door and your mailbox, so you can collect your mail 24x7.

Clara, the same is true with bins here - and they get emptied every day. Last year our poll tax was €20 each for the year, but this year they've abolished poll tax if you live in the countryside.

[ina]

We don't have delivery either and pick our mail up once a week from the PO on market day. Our local PO is about 5km away and is only open mon-fri 11:30-12:30, really it isn't a problem. Like Contadin@ said, it keeps costs down.

How do people manage who have to work for a living? I mean, an ordinary job - not one where you can pick and choose your hours? Or is it just people who run their own farms, smallholdings or other businesses like that who are affected?

[Annpan]

I am not sure I understand what stopping deliveries has to do with our council tax? The post office/royal mail is privatised.

Why was possible 15 years ago for every house in Britain to have 2 deliveries a day and now we are lucky to get one? I do believe that the postal service is great value and if we didn't have it so good it would make living in the countryside much more difficult (I like being able to order almost anything online and know that the postie will bring it in a few days) But in the last few years we have lost late deliveries, the post bus and many post offices. Yet the costs of posting things in this country is rising above inflation every year and have been since privatisation.

We are lucky here to have a great postie, who we all know by name, he knows all of us (He recently gave me some big barn cloches that his mum was throwing out) He is a big part of our wee community and I would be very angry if we lost his regular deliveries.

[ina]

Ann, I think partly it's because the post has lost a lot of business in recent years - a lot more being done online, a lot of parcels sent by courier. Of course, you could argue that at least part of that is their own fault; if couriers are better and cheaper, of course people will use them... But e-mail has definitely made one heck of a difference to the number of letters the post shifts nowadays.

I'd be sad to see our postie go, too. It's like the milkman - they have a social job, too, keeping an eye on folk living alone, or properties where the owners are on holiday etc.

[Bluemoon]

We live in the city, yet we collect all our post. The reason is simple, it's the only way we can guarantee that we receive it. In the past we've had letters arrive weeks late with 'No letterbox' written across them, we've had phone calls from companies asking where we now live as our mail has been returned to them marked 'Gone Away'. We had an agent from one company on our doorstep asking where the 'previous occupant' now lived. As we've been here years we were a little taken aback and, yes, it was us they were searching for, a letter had been returned marked 'No longer at this address'. A friend who lives a couple of streets away, whilst on holiday abroad, found that her bank account had been closed down as two letters had been returned to her bank with 'Addressee Unknown' scrawled across the front. She and her son were left penniless for two days until her sister managed to get funds to her. I've heard of people who have had their benefits stopped because of this and at least two people have not been able to accept jobs/college places because the offer letters didn't arrive. The stupidest thing I've ever heard though was when the postman claimed that someone's address didn't exist, despite the fact that it was number 47 on a terraced street, when numbers 45 and 49 were either side, receiving their post without problem and they'd been previously delivering to 47 for years. Royal Mail ceased deliveries in urban areas a long time ago, it's just that they didn't publicize it. Complaints have proved to be pointless and we've decided that it must be some sort of policy, after all, the more people who collect their mail, the fewer staff will be needed.

[DominicJ]

Inflation hasnt really been 2% for the past decade.
There is also a demand element too, there isnt much demand.
If RM were told they could delivery to this village twice a week instead of everyday, it would suddenly be less of H&S problem.
But because they have to deliver everyday, its stupidly loss making to drive a van 5 miles for a few pence, they've H&S to get out of it
But sadly, our mad government would happily kill RM (Indeed is doing) before it accepts not everything is equal everywhere.