Posting Franked Mail in Royal Mail Post / Pillar Boxes

Royal Mail’s iconic red post boxes are a familiar and practical feature of British life and a Royal Mail post box stands within half a mile of over 98% of the UK population.

With over 85,000 in England and 115,500 in use across the UK post boxes more and more home users of franking machines are now using their local post boxes rather than trailing to a post office.

For many years however the use of post boxes has been an area of confusion fuelled in part by Royal Mail sending letters to some franking machine users requesting that they use a post office rather than a post box.

The key word in these letters is ‘requesting’ – so what are the 3 golden rules to abide by when using post boxes for franked mail to make life as easy as possible for you and for your local sorting office

Do not clog up the post box.
Guidelines recommend placing a maximum of 30 letters per bundle into a pillar box/post on the day of franking prior the collection time.

Separate your mail by class
Please separate franked mail into bundles of 1St Class, 2nd Class or International as it means less manual intervention during the sortation process

Always post your mail on time
Please check the collection times on the post / pillar box ensuring the franked mail is all dated correctly otherwise a surcharge will be incurred for every mail item.

Useful tips for franking machine users
Franked mail is dated and is designated by Royal Mail as ‘business mail’.
Franked mail is separated from non-dated mail such as stamps, PPI, DSA and monitored as it passes through the Royal Mail system.

Mail-mark franking machines allow forward dating which means today’s late mail can be franked with tomorrow’s date in preparation for collection tomorrow.

For any advice on franked mail or franking machines please contact Postal and Data Systems ….