Royal Mail policy on delivery where there is no letterbox

[BeckyLum876]

Hi I own a shop which was sadly shut for much of last year due to staff shortages. It has full glass retail frontage on to a pedestrian only street, but it has no letterbox.

it is the registered office address for my company because we have an office in the same building on an upper floor but it is accessed through the shop, so we usually have staff working in the building but they don't work in the actual shop so the door remains locked most of the time.

Sometimes we seem to get letters pushed under the door but we have been issued with a fine from a public body that said they posted a notice to us just ordinary first class post that we never received, and because we didn't act on the notice (that we were unaware of because we never received their letter!) they are refusing to cancel the fine.

Because they did not use a tracking service we have no way of verifying whether they sent it or not, but we definitely did not receive it.

We can appeal but I am trying to build a case that they have been negligent in delivering the notice and therefore it was not validly served because they did not ensure it was received.

I am wondering whether it got sent when our shop was closed, what would the royal mail policy be for ordinary first class post that cannot be delivered due to lack of a letterbox? would the policy be to send it back to sender? or would the send have to write that on the envelope?

The public body have been really unhelpful and won't look into the matter at all from their end so I am just trying to work out what could have happened in this scenario?

Is it plausible that if royal mail couldn't deliver to the address due to a lack of letterbox, they sent it back to sender? If I could demonstrate this is a possibility I think I may be able to persuade them to cancel the fine!

Many Thanks

[yellowbelly]

Hi I own a shop which was sadly shut for much of last year due to staff shortages. It has full glass retail frontage on to a pedestrian only street, but it has no letterbox.

....................

Is it plausible that if royal mail couldn't deliver to the address due to a lack of letterbox, they sent it back to sender? If I could demonstrate this is a possibility I think I may be able to persuade them to cancel the fine!

Many Thanks

Really still occupying the building and knowing it has no letterbox you should have made arrangements for your mail delivery. That's not the fault of the organisation issuing the fine or Royal Mail, it's your responsibility. Otherwise every scallywag who knows that they're going to get a speeding fine would seal their mailbox or remove it from the wall and say 'It's not my fault'.

If mail is undeliverable for any reason it gets marked as undeliverable with a sticker indicating which of several reasons why it couldn't be delivered. If the envelope has a return address it should go straight back to that address. If mail has no return address it goes to the National Mail Returns Centre where effort might be made to discover the sender, then destroyed if that's not possible.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

This would probably fall under the "Delivery EExceptions" part of the USO

Namley: Insecurity or Difficulty of Access

https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app ... exceptions

[BeckyLum876]

Thanks both for the help it is really appreciated.

Yes I have been silly not to put something better in place, I didn't really think about it because usually if someone sends us something important they send it by recorded delivery which we then know to collect when we get the card, or our shop neighbour takes it in for us.

Happily we now have some staff and the shop is open and trading again

thank goodness!