The other day, for the first time in what must be at least a year, I actually had cause to stick a postage stamp on something and pop it into a post box.
[Warning: There might be a hint of rambling, but I think I get there in the end]
By the time I'd done this, despite it being fairly early in the morning, I had already missed the only collection of the day. Good thing it wasn't a Friday, otherwise it would have sat there all weekend without being collected.
Nowadays post boxes tend to be emptied only once in the morning, as it gives Royal Mail a better chance of hitting its delivery targets. Those targets are 93% of first class letters being delivered within one working day of collection; 98.5% of second class letters being delivered within three working days of collection. Despite stacking the deck in its own favour, Royal Mail frequently misses those delivery targets by a country mile.
It's a far cry from only a decade ago when you could put something in a post box at teatime and be fairly confident it would be collected by the end of the day. Gone are the days when the friendly local postie would speculatively check a post box just because they happened to be passing.
It's a bit of an anachronism that in the twenty first century the police and courts rely so heavily on the use of first class post for the service of documents, but there are very few practical alternatives.
Part 4 of the Criminal Procedure Rules 2025 describes the various ways that a document might be served. As far as defendants in Magistrates' Court proceedings are concerned that invariably means by either first class post or personal service.
For reasons that will become apparent, I should mention that a document is deemed served by first class post on the second business day after it is posted (Rule 4.11(2)(b)). Service can be evidenced by a certificate of service - basically a signed statement confirming the document was posted first class on a certain day (Rule 4.12).
Personal service tends not to happen, because it easier and less labour intensive to drop something into the post. The Rules do allow the service of documents electronically, but that is of little practical benefit at the commencement of proceedings as it requires the recipient's prior permission.
In addition to letters being delivered late, an increasing number simply don't turn up at all.
Since privatisation Royal Mail keeps the number of lost letters a closely guarded secret. However, the annual Ofcom Postal Monitoring Report for 2023/24 (at page 18) indicates that Royal Mail received 1.24 million complaints about lost mail, which was up from 898,000 the previous year. Of course those figures only reflect losses that have been noticed by the intended recipient. The actual number of losses is likely to be much greater than that.
Given the lacklustre performance of Royal Mail, it is hardly surprising that an increasing number of people appearing before the court blame lost or delayed paperwork for their predicament. Whereas a decade ago I might have struggled to believe a defendant didn't receive a summons, requisition, section 172 notice or whatever it happened to be, nowadays there may be credence to such a claim.
So what's the solution? To be honest, I don't know that. What I do know is that recorded delivery is not the answer, as demonstrated by the following anecdote.
A lady was before the court accused of a section 172 offence - e.g. failing to identify the driver of a vehicle. As is often the case, the vehicle registered in her name had been clocked by a speed camera and the police were seeking to establish who was driving at the time.
The lady went on holiday a few days after the alleged offence and she was not at home when the section 172 notice was delivered. Ordinarily that wouldn't be an issue, as the notice would have been posted through her letterbox and greeting her on the doormat when she arrived home a fortnight later.
However, for reasons that aren't immediately apparent, the person who dispatched the notice did so using recorded delivery. The upshot was that when the postie tried to deliver it they were unable to, because there was no-one to sign for it. After two further failed delivery attempts the notice was returned to the delivery office where it was held for a few more days before being returned to the police. The prosecutor had a scan of the returned envelope, which had been endorsed as being non-deliverable.
I am pleased to say the prosecutor took a suitably pragmatic approach to the situation and withdrew the case. In all honesty it should have been resolved administratively before it got as far as court.
Had it not been for the fact the police mistakenly sent the notice by recorded delivery, the lady would never have been able to evidence the fact that it hadn't been delivered.
In this case, the use of recorded delivery was a bit of an own goal for the police.
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