No more Sunday collections from Worthing post boxes

Notices about this nationwide cutback have been placed on all collecting boxes in the Worthing area.

A Royal Mail spokesman said: "Royal Mail operates in a fully competitive postal market and needs to work efficiently to ensure its customers continue to receive a high quality of service into the future.

"Royal Mail collects from 115,000 post boxes Monday to Saturday and from just 18,000 post boxes on Sundays. Demand for a Sunday service, introduced in 1990, is limited and accounts for less than one per cent of all mail posted each week '” and the small volumes means it costs four times as much to handle this mail than items collected on other days."

He said a Sunday collection is not required under the Universal Service Obligation (USO). Just 50 business customers have a collection on a Sunday compared with 87,000 during the week.

Sunday collections do not take place in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium and Finland.

In Europe, only Sweden, Holland and Greece have Sunday collections.