I’m frankly stunned to discover that houses are still being built with low level letter boxes at the bottom of doors instead of higher up at waist level. It turns out however that it’s more common that you’d think and, with some 16,800 back related absences from Royal Mail every year, saving Postie’s from bending over multiple times a day to pop the letters in is probably partly to blame.
In January, Conservative MP Vicky Ford managed to slot a Ten Minute Rule Bill into the Parliamentary agenda (and to a packed House of Commons just as politicians were preparing to debate a vote of no confidence in the Government). The Bill is the culmination of a campaign to prevent Low Level Letter Boxes being fitted to new builds.
The Low Level Letter Box Bill won unanimous support from MPs and the Building Regulations Advisory Committee is going to include low level letter boxes rules in a review of Building Regulations due as early as 2020.
One has to wonder why such regulation is even needed. Surely common sense would mean that as new doors are manufactured that someone would have figured out that letters don’t generally get damaged with a metre drop to the floor and that hand height is a much better option?
If you’re reading this and in the market for a new door, spare a thought for the postie and make sure that your new front door is specified with the letter box at a reasonable height… although having said that I had a brand new front door with a mid-height letter box fitted this year and, with the deluge of parcels that flow to my house, my postie still bends down to the low level cat flap and uses that as a parcel delivery point!
