RM policy on delivering to building sites?

[Wiggins79]

Apologies if this has been covered before, but I couldn't find any info.

I'm a day-off cover and on one of the rounds I deliver there have in the last few months 3 seperate new housing estates started to be built. Now, for the first two, the sales office went up very early on at the site entrance with a external mailbox on the wall for when the office wasn't open. This meant that in the early days there was no need to actually enter the site itself to deliver and endanger yourself by braving the lorries and jcb's etc. Of course several months on, the first lot of houses are occupied and now I have to deliver to them as well, even though the road is unfinished and there is considerable on-site traffic. At no point has this been discussed or okayed with any management. Just expected to get on with it.

My big issue came this week when the 3rd estate, which has had no mail or sales office to deliver to suddenly started to get packets (parcels? whatever) addressed to the buidling company. My initial reaction was to return them as address inaccessible, but I thought I'd better at least see what I could do. When I went past the entrance to the estate there were workers at the front who said they were only contractors and that the people in charge were further in. One look and I could see that lorries and other large equipment were moving about so I decided not to bother and stick to my original plan. Incidentally, I could see that there was now a sales office at the front, but that it was shuttered, with no opening times and no external letterbox, otherwise I would have carded them.

That street is on a loop, and by the time I had finished and was coming back up the other side, I saw that the sales office was open, so I crossed the road to go and deliver the 2 packets I had for them. Once inside the lady there decided to be snooty and clever and declared that the packets where for the site office and needed taking there. How she would have known that is another issue as the address labels had been cunningly placed so as to make it nigh on impossible to actually read the first half of the address, but anyway. I'll be honest, I was having a bad day (well it's been a bad several months actually) and I was narked at this woman's attitude and the assumption that I should be made, on a flimsy cycle, to brave a major buidling site to deliver their crap when there was an open sales office. So, without using curse words, I told the womand that I didn't deliver to the site as it was too dangerous and if she didn't want the packets I would take them back to the office and return them to sender. Obviously being a jobsworth, she declared "we'll see about that" and reluctantly took the packets.

Sorry, this has really gone much longer-winded than I wanted!

Basically, what I want to know is where do we stand on delivering to buidling sites? Especially when we are still on cycles? Surely health and safety should actually prevent it? Incidentally, we are in a small reural spdo, hence why there was no management to decide on this. Also, incidentally, shouldn't they have been out to assess the impact of all these new houses on the round? I know the lady whose round it is continuously goes over her hours and and has been requesting someone to come out and time the round. Any help and/or advice massively appreciated.

[Postie45]

I think you can request to have the whole area risk assessed by a manager, pretty sure all areas are supposed to be risk assessed anyway and as this is obviously a new place it hasnt been done yet. In the meantime Id take the mail out with me everyday in the hope that some kind of safe to access mail point is available, but if there isnt just keep bringing the mail back to the office and mark it as "unsafe to deliver"

[seaside53]

We've been delivering to new estate recently and it's growing fast! Previously all post went to the sales office initially as Manager said unsafe due to diggers, JCB's etc flying around everywhere! However, a few houses are now sold & lived in so we're delivering to those as there's no plant machinery around.

More houses being built though and we'll be using sales office again until site is safe again. Worrying thing is no-one at RM has bothered to find out how many houses will be eventually built and what walks they'll be added to....could be around 100+ by the time they're done!

[Wiggins79]

Cheers for the advice guys. Think I'll inform the manager (whoever that will be this week ) that I'm only going to deliver to the sales office as it's all I deem safe on the latest estate. Request they comeout and do a risk assessment as well.

[spen]

you shouldn't be on a building site without hard hat, hi vis vest,, stee toe boots and whatever ppe you have to wear on site, nothing to do with royal mail its building site law

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Yep don't go beyond this sign



and ultimately if you yourself feel that to progress any further, even in the absence of warning signs, is dangerous - then don't.

See these threads where delivery was stopped http://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/communit ... ite+safety" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/communit ... ty#p122791" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/communit ... ety#p50461" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[dvbuk55]

We recently had a similar situation which was allowed to go on UNTIL a member had a quite serious accident which required him to be in hospital for some time and left him with a terrible scar. Basically he stumbled on an uneven unmade road and went headlong into the edge of a kerb with his forehead. To cap it all they tried to lay some of the blame on him because they said he had been seen to be rushing. He has still, after several months, been unable to return to normal duties. So my advice would be do not enter a building site and even to go as far as the site office needs to be risk assessed with the thought of having it delivered by vehicle.

[Mr Rush]

I was told never to enter a building site. Of course, my LM only told me this after I attempted to reach a site office and almost got run over. <-No hard hat

[luccombelad]

I doubt the delivery point is on the Aplus system, if its not, you don't have to deliver the item. What constitutes an address is laid down in our licence. Plus, if the local council does not approve an address - it's not an address. Firstly, the property must be paying either council tax, or business rates to be classed as an address.

But, as previous posters have said, H&S comes first, even if the address is listed.

I try to help people, but if the 'site' doesn't have sales office, or a there's not a gate with someone staffing it, I won't deliver the item.

I will RTS items if the guy on the gate refuses to take the item, and then I endorse the item with 'Refused' on the dead sticker.

There are usually some dangerously thick people on building sites. I've stood in a site managers asking for someone to sign for a package, and I've been ignored by 5 people. I've written 739's in front of them, and left the 739 on a desk.