Postboxes across Oxford – and across the UK – have been wrapped in black plastic as their doors have been removed to allow them to be retrofitted and upgraded to ‘postboxes of the future’. The change is the biggest redesign in the iconic red postbox’s 175-year history.
Following a successful pilot in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire in April 2025, Royal Mail plans to roll out 3,500 solar-powered postboxes. The new design features a scanner and a drawer for parcels, and allows customers to send and return labelled parcels as big as a shoebox through a postbox for the first time. The barcode scanner also allows for proof of postage and tracking. This is in addition to the regular letter slot.
A Royal Mail spokesperson told Cherwell: “Our postboxes of the future offer another convenient way for customers in Oxford to access Royal Mail’s services, alongside home delivery and collection, our Customer Service Points, Post Office branches, lockers and Royal Mail Shops. We’re pleased to see positive feedback from customers in areas where the postboxes have already been introduced, and we hope that local residents will find them just as useful and convenient.”
The change is in response to Royal Mail struggling against competition from other companies, and follows the company facing fines after failing to meet letter- delivery targets. Ofcom rules state that 93% of first-class mail must be delivered within one working day, yet between March 2024 and March 2025, Royal Mail said that just 76.3% of first-class deliveries arrived within this window. It also follows Royal Mail’s decision to no longer deliver second-class letters on Saturdays, and to deliver on every other weekday in order to cut costs.
The turnaround for upgrades can be several weeks as each box is individually measured, the existing door is taken off and the new door must be transported from the Royal Mail engineering centre in Gloucester. The boxes are wrapped to protect them from the weather or vandalism during the upgrade.
Royal Mail has faced criticism in recent years due to price hikes: since 2022, the cost of a first-class stamp has risen from 85p to £1.70. Despite pushing up prices, Royal Mail made a loss of £384 million in the year 2023-4. These new postboxes are a clear attempt from Royal Mail to keep up with competitors.
Jack Clarkson, Managing Director of Out of Home and Commercial Excellence at Royal Mail, said: “We are all sending and returning more parcels than ever before. This trend will only continue as online shopping shows no signs of slowing, particularly with the boom of second-hand marketplaces. There are 115,000 postboxes in the UK located within half a mile of 98% of addresses, making them by far the most convenient network of parcel drop-off points in the UK. Our message is clear, if you have a Royal Mail label on your parcel, and it fits, put it in a postbox and we’ll do the rest.”
