Residents who have been commenting on the erratic deliveries of mail will be pleased to know that the issue has been taken up by our MP, Mike Martin.
In April, Royal Mail proposed to shift its focus from letters to parcels with all non-First Class mail delivered every other weekday. Thirty seven delivery offices around the country were involved in a pilot, including the Tonbridge office which is responsible for all TN postcodes.
Unfortunately, this has not gone to plan, if there ever was one, and there have been a lot of complaints about letters taking up to two weeks to arrive and no letters for days and then suddenly a large deluge. Mile Martin along with MPs Tom Tugenhadt (Tonbridge) and Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) have written to the regulator Ofcom. They are demanding these reforms should not be implemented given the failure of the pilot and the service issues in the TN postcodes are urgently resolved.
We shall see. Having spoken to both our regular posties it seems there is chaos in the Tonbridge office and management are not listening to their feedback.
The problem over dwindling letter volumes isn’t unique to the UK. Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, is ending all letter deliveries at the end of 2025 due to a 90% decline in letter volumes over the past 25 years. The country’s 1,500 post boxes started to disappear from June of this year.
There are no plans to phase out letterboxes in the UK at the moment, but with the recent sale of Royal Mail to Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský we shall see. Although outlasted by letters, the only remaining phone box in the WPARA area, the rare K2 by the cricket club, will shortly be disconnected. Maybe our post boxes will join it in the coming years.
