Address 'postcode lottery', residents demand

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THEY were designed to ensure mail moves just a little bit faster. But now they determine the value of our homes, how much we pay for our insurance and, thanks to the explosion of satnavs, how we get from A to B.
Britain's often eccentric system of postcodes is to come under the scrutiny of the Scottish Parliament. At issue is a system which – for most people – delivers one of the world's best postal services yet somehow also manages to list whole Scottish v
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illages as being in England, identifies the islands of Tiree and Coll with Paisley and reckons rural Sutherland is best lumped together with Kirkwall, Orkney.

The result is not only missing packages and lost travellers, but also emergency services being routed to wrong locations.

MSPs will next month hear a petition from a group of Highlanders who reckon they have drawn some of the worst lots in the UK's "postcode lottery". They hail from in and around tiny Lochaline, on the remote western peninsula of Morvern, and they aren't pleased. The residents of Lochaline for years have suffered from having an Oban postcode, PA34, despite being at least two hours and two ferry rides away from the gateway to the Hebrides. Their mail usually arrives on time – if, at best, in the early afternoon. But much of the rest of their lives is blighted by being PA34.

Douglas Watt, a retired hospital consultant, said: "The worst thing I remember is when I had my heart attack a few years ago. I remember hearing my doctor phoning for an ambulance to Fort William, which is our nearest hospital, and being told by the control room in Inverness that he should be going to Oban.

"Having an Oban postcode means that we have horrendous problems getting anything delivered, especially anything bulky by courier. More often than not it ends up at the pierhead at Oban and no further. I have had calls from people ringing from Morvern Crescent in Oban and asking where my house is."

Some locals now refuse to reveal their postcode to delivery firms. The Lochaline doctors' surgery has a warning on its door, telling visitors to the area not to obey NHS 24 instructions to head for Oban hospital if they are sick.

Insurers still seem to think they should charge Lochaline customers the kind of prices they would pay if they were in a suburb of Oban. Some firms, Lochaline residents claim, seem to think the village is part of Paisley – centre of the PA postcode zone, some three and a half hours south by road.

The Lochaline campaigners backed by Morvern Community Council lodged a petition bemoaning the "adverse economic and social costs that misleading postcodes have, particularly on rural communities". They have had more than 200 signatories so far.

One backer is Peter Peacock, one of Labour's list MSPs for the Highlands and Islands. He said: "So far the Royal Mail have shown remarkable intransigence and have refused to budge. The problems caused to local people, however, continue and intensify. Morvern is not alone in having this problem."

The Lochaline postcode crisis echoes that of the Borders villages of Fouldon and Paxton. They both nestle north of the Tweed and the frontier with England and come with a TD15 postcode area, the same as Berwick Upon Tweed (where some residents are also unhappy to be in the Scottish TD or Tweed postal zone). The TD15 designation has caused chaos for many people north of the border. Homes are listed as being in Northumberland and calls to the emergency services have occasionally been rerouted to English control rooms.

The Royal Mail, however, has already prepared its defence for MSPs. Meddling with the established system, first trialled in Norwich almost 50 years ago, would cause too much trouble. Postcodes, the posties reckon, are there for mail deliveries. Yes, they are used for satnavs and insurance purposes, but that isn't the responsibility of the Royal Mail, which is obliged, by law, to sell addresses to third parties.

Campaigners yesterday stressed the posties have relented in the past, not least when they were embarrassed into changing the Belfast code that ended 1RA and the Sussex one that managed to be 5EX. Recently the Royal Mail changed the code for the Nevis Range after motorists navigating by satellite kept turning up at a forest car park two miles away.

Elsewhere in the UK, however, efforts to rejig postcodes for what the Royal Mail calls "subjective" reasons have been turned down. The citizens of well-to-do Windsor, for example, were told they had to stay in the postal zone of less prestigious Slough.

Any bid to get postcodes changed from poorer to richer neighbourhoods has been refused.

A spokesman for the Royal Mail said: "To introduce subjective external criteria would undermine the ability of the postcode to function."