Royal Mail stops Sunday collections

Royal Mail is to stop Sunday collections from post boxes and business from tomorrow.

The company, which introduced the service in 1990, had collected from 18,000 post boxes across the UK each Sunday.

But it said there was limited customer demand and that Sunday collections accounted for less than 1 pct of all mail posted each week.

Royal Mail said it also cost four times as much to handle Sunday mail compared to items collected on other days.

Information on the affected post boxes has been changed and those in areas of high usage will be monitored and emptied if there is a risk of overflowing.

Postal watchdog Postwatch carried out a survey into the demand for Sunday collections earlier this year and found that 68 pct of people said they used the service ‘very seldom’ or ‘never’.