Disruptive Proactivity

A community loses many things when your Post Office closes. One major loss is the 4pm (or later) Royal Mail collection from the postbox that remains outside the row of shops that include the now-closed Post Office.

Any business can pay for a Royal Mail collection at a time that suits them. Tesco installs postboxes just inside the entrances of larger stores and simply pays for collection. If you’re the shop next door to the former Post Office, you can do the same – pay Royal Mail to collect mail from a postbox inside your shop. But it has to be inside.

A shop, even one that sells stamps, cannot pay Royal Mail to collect from the public postbox right outside their door, even if they wanted to.

And a community? They are not allowed to pay for an afternoon collection from their local postbox. It’s simply not an option Royal Mail currently allows, even if someone would pay for it.

As a result, residents must travel farther to find an afternoon collection point – and any shopping they might have done locally often gets done elsewhere instead.

This is something Royal Mail could change easily: the collection point being paid for could be an existing postbox.