Royal Mail sends 25million items a year to the shredder

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Royal Mail has admitted it destroys an average of 25million letters, packets and parcels every year.

A mountain of undelivered correspondence – costing millions in postage – is amassed at the firm’s National Returns Centre at a rate of almost 70,000 items per day.

Items with valuable contents are retained and then sold at auction, with the profits going to Royal Mail – but the rest are shredded.

The company has destroyed 152million items of post that could not be delivered or returned to sender in the last six years, according to figures obtained following a Freedom of Information request. It said the majority were business mail.
About 68million items are posted with Royal Mail every day, at a time when the cost of a first-class stamp is at a record high of 41p.

However, some envelopes bear no address and are simply written out to the likes of ‘Mum and Dad’.

Others have clues as to the identity of the intended recipient, which staff at Royal Mail’s specialist centre in Belfast can occasionally piece together. One Christmas card was addressed to ‘Mr and Mrs T Burlingham? A road somewhere near the golf course in Thetford, Norfolk’. The only other hint was: ‘Trevor is a photographer (weddings), this might help.’

After carrying out an exhaustive investigation, Royal Mail successfully delivered the card to Mr Burlingham and his wife Annette.

However, the vast majority of undelivered items end up in the shredder because they provide little or no information to identify their intended location. In the last financial year, 21,106,485 were destroyed – but 5.2million were returned to sender.

The details have been released for the first time following an FoI request which Royal Mail initially refused to grant on the grounds that the data would be ‘likely to result in negative publicity’ and its competitors could portray the figures ‘derogatively’.

But the Information Commissioner overruled the company and ordered it to publish the figures, with a report from Christopher Graham stating he was ‘not persuaded’ by Royal Mail’s arguments.

It continued: ‘The Commissioner accepts that there may be some negative publicity attached to the release of these figures but, as Royal Mail is the main player in the market, the public are likely to assume that it will deal with large quantities of undeliverable mail – a percentage of which will have to be sent for disposal.

‘The Commissioner notes that Royal Mail receives positive publicity for the manner in which it has delivered or returned post with minimal, inaccurate or illegible address details.

‘He is satisfied that it is possible to contextualise the figures as one aspect of the work of the National Returns Centre, which aims to reunite post with its intended recipient.’

Last night, a Royal Mail spokesman said it would be ‘irresponsible’ not to safely dispose of undeliverable mail if it could not be returned to sender.

He added: ‘Royal Mail tries very hard to ascertain the correct address and deliver the item. If that is not possible, we will seek to return it to the sender free of charge. It is always a last resort when Royal Mail disposes of mail.’

He confirmed that items ‘that have a value’ are stored for four months before being sold at auction, with proceeds used to offset the £4million annual cost of running the National Returns Centre, which has 160 full-time staff.



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[not me]

rather than siimply release details
why not make it a condition of posting that all mail items require a return address
okay,cant be enforced on post boxes but certainly at post offices

[RedBagMan]

I'd be interested in details of the auctions (when and where) - reckon RM staff should have first shout

[chelseachris]

I'd be interested in details of the auctions (when and where) - reckon RM staff should have first shout

I would say a lot of things do not make it to auction

[hans solo]

probably along with the missing asda vouchers

[Straight4ward]

Sounds as if that's where our 'share certificates' should go.

[Lounge Lizard]

"Royal Mail has admitted it destroys an average of 25million letters, packets and parcels every year." - so that's just under one item per address in the UK each year and what proportion of them are 'Courier' magazines ?