Mail contractor 'Dumped millions of letters in landfill'

MILLIONS of letters and other items due to be delivered by the Royal Mail have been buried in landfill sites or discarded in rubbish skips.

Scotland Yard confirmed yesterday that it is investigating a mailing company for allegedly dumping hundreds of mail bags with household rubbish. Five people have been arrested and released on bail.

The company had been paid to transfer post from client organisations to the Royal Mail but detectives believe that clients were being charged for mail they never passed on, and that this was post which they believed nobody would miss, such as magazines and direct mail. It was then allegedly loaded into skips and dispatched to rubbish tips.

Among the discarded mail, however, were important letters, believed to include university correspondence and blood test results. The Open University last week confirmed that it was one of the institutions that used the company, Mail Logistics, now under investigation.

Royal Mail said the situation was “very worrying”. A spokesman for Consignia, which owns the Royal Mail, said: “We have not come across anything like this on such a scale. This is mail that had not entered our system, but we are helping police with their inquiries.”

Mail Logistics, based in Acton, west London, successfully approached more than 30 organisations with its mail services, offering to supply the letters to Royal Mail for delivery at a discount. Hundreds of sacks of mail are believed to have ended up in landfill sites in Essex.

“This operation had been going on since about January,” said a Scotland Yard source. “One of their customers had been sending out medical test results and people complained they had not received the results, some of which were blood tests.

“Investigators followed two mail lorries and observed them going to landfill sites and depositing the mail. It’s estimated that each skipload represented a loss of Pounds 100,000 in revenue to the Royal Mail.”

Speaking at his Oxfordshire home yesterday, Royston Heaton, a director of Mail Logistics, said: “We are innocent. It’s not in my interest to discuss this, but we’ve been dealt a bad hand.”

Gary Spink, a spokesman for the Open University, said: “We have been informed of a police investigation into one of our mailing contractors. We understand there is a suspicion that some mail may have ended up in landfill sites.”

He said staff would examine to what extent their correspondence by mail might have been affected, but said there was no indication to date of a significant problem.