Low level letterbox prohibition bill

[Andrew Gabriel]

So, the Low Level Letterbox Prohibition Bill got an unusually large viewing today, and cross party support...

[The Natural Philosopher]

It is, even for politicians, a no brainer.

[NY]

I wasn't sure whether this was a fictitious bill, but it really does exist. It makes a lot of sense for houses to have letter boxes that are more at hand height as the postman is standing at the door. Shame it doesn't also mandate a minimum height of the hole, to accommodate thicker packages without the postman having to ring the bell or take the package back to the sorting office for you to collect. At our old house I cut a larger hole for a larger letter box, and the postman commented on several occasions how much easier it made his life as he rarely had to take anything back to the sorting office. Shame that modern UPVC doors (unlike wooden ones) don't make it easy to fit a larger box than the small ones that the doors usually come with.

[Nick Odell]

....and expressed by a writer whose sentence doesn't parse.

Please tell them that ought to be:

....masquerading as public service which doesn't serve the public.

or:

....self-legalising protection racketeers who don't protect.....

but not a mixture of both -ugh!

Nick

[The Natural Philosopher]

It does,

No, you cannot have 'self legalising protection rackets' (plural) 'masquareading as a public service' (singular)

Why not. Many rackets, one per country, is what we have.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

But hasn't the country voted to leave the EU - primarily to stop being told what to do?

[alan_m]

It doesn't seem to make much difference where I live. On multiple occasions I've had the card instructing me to go to the distribution centre to pick up a package that is too large. On collecting the "package" I find that it is two or more packages held together with a red rubber band and if removed they would have all individually fitted through my letter box with ease.

[GB]

There really ought to be a standard letterbox size. Much stuff could then be packaged so as to fit through that size. There's no reason, in principle, why say whisky bottles could not be shaped to go through a letterbox. But, there's no point doing that unless there's a standard size AND many houses have that size.

Will this Bill require changing existing letterboxes? If so, it should go the whole hog and mandate size, as well as height.

[charles]

If you're going to put whisky through a letterbox there will need to be a "catcher" on the other side, there's a 4ft drop behind my letterbox.

The has been a Post Office preferred size for a great many years = certainly since before we moved into this house - and that was 41 years ago.

[Chris J Dixon]

I suppose the nearest we get to that is specifying the size limits for various postage classes, so that larger becomes significantly more expensive.

Chris

[NY]

To stop being told what to do *by anyone other than their own elected government*.

[ARW]

50 attacks by cats every year:-)

[alan_m]

You haven't seen how many carriers handle your parcels. The 4 ft drop behind the letter box will be the least of your worries.

[Chris Green]

Do TPTB really imagine that cats can't reach higher up letter boxes? In reality it would just add to the sport, they'd dig their claws in harder to stay attached to the 'intruder'.

[charles]

If they drop the parcel en-route, I claim it hasn't been delivered and they send another one, if it drops on my on floor , I have the problem of clearing it and not getting the contents in a way I can make use of them.

[Robin]

It's not a real Bill. It's a 10 minute rule Bill. That's a procedure which lets MPs speak for 10 minutes on an idea they'd like to see legislated by (usually) the government. So there's no detail behind the substance. But on the face of it the Bill was to "amend building regulations to require letter boxes in new buildings to be positioned above a certain height" (NB not even new doors.) But that'd all be for consultation/discussion/debate come a real Bill with proposals worked up by officials.

[Steve Walker]

About 11 years ago, we were looking at moving to Ireland (it fell through because of me suffering a health problem and by the time I'd recovered, the economy had collapsed). At the time we looked into everything that we coulkd think of and one was acompariosn of building regulations - IIRC mid-level letterboxes were in their version that long ago, but the rest was pretty much the same as ours.

The only problem I can see is that it would make replacement of full-glass porch door, like for like, impossible or require a ridiculous looking hole in the middle of the glass.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

Back in the days where I ddi friends' newspaper rounds when they were on holiday (I never had one myself). I simpy made sure that my fingers stayed outside the box. Postmen are even issued with push-sticks to push items through in safety.

The back bending is another matter.

SteveW

[ARW]

When I had a paper round I had one customer with a Yorkshire terrier that always attacked. A rolled up copy of the newspaper through the letterbox delivered at high velocity usually sent it yelping down the hall way if you waited until you could see it's eyes.

[Steve Walker]

Yes, I'm sure that they could spend millions working on it ... or they could simply copy the Irish rules, probably substituting BS-EN13724 for the Irish standard!

"Building Regulations 2000 Technical Guidance Document D Materials and Workmanship

Section 1.6 - Letter Plates

Letter plates should be designed, manufactured and installed in accordance with I.S. 195:1976, subject to the following (see also Diagram 1): (a) the minimum length of the aperture of a letter plate should be 250 mm (+/- 10 mm) and the minimum height should be 38 mm (+/- 1.5 mm); (b) the unit of torque (listed in the standard) should be N mm."

This is followed by a diagram showing a minumum mounting height of 760mm to the lower edge, a maximum of 1450 to the upper edge and an ideal of

1070 to the centre.