PO Box numbers - change of Royal Mail policy - be warned!

GraceCourt

PO Boxes, perhaps surprisingly, were never originally set up to provide anonymity. They were a means for larger companies to have their mail "pre-sorted" instead of everything being delivered in one huge bundle that would require further sorting by the recipient... so, for example, the Finance Department might have one PO Box number, the Sales Department a differing one, and so on.

There is plenty of evidence for this - you might be surprised to know that, right up until it was repealed in 2000, Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act 1920 required anyone operating an accommodation address not only to register with the police, but to keep comprehensive records of everything that was so kept for collection or forwarded, and those records had to be made available for inspection on demand. And, as the Royal Mail didn't have such a registration, it couldn't withhold delivery addresses.

But even after 2000, Royal Mail Business Centres would freely provide the delivery address "behind" a PO Box number, even though sometimes it took escalation to a supervisor or, ultimately, the Regional Operations Manager to override any security-eager employee who tried to withold it. More recently, a system was introduced whereby, if the licence holder signed a declaration that disclosure of the delivery address was likely to lead to harm and/or loss to the business (e.g. many debt collection companies use PO Box numbers!) the delivery address would be withheld.

As a matter of interest, history has repeated itself (well, sort of) because Section 75 of the London Local Authorities Act 2007 allows London boroughs to adopt Section 75 of the Act and require the providers of accommodation addresses (now neatly renamed "virtual offices" for the Third Millennium!) to pay a fee of £150 to register as such with the local authority - this has been implemented in the City of London but I don't know which, if any, other boroughs have done so.

Now, it seems, the Royal Mail has quietly changed its policy on disclosure, and - a long way on from the situation that has prevailed for over a hundred years - it has now decided that NO delivery address will be disclosed. So the Royal Mail is now providing accommodation addresses, and - of course - that means even if you have saved a fortune by switching from Royal Mail to a far more efficient (and, of course, far cheaper!) delivery or courier service, in order to deliver to a PO Box number you have to send the item via Royal Mail.

The cynical would say it's a last-ditch effort to keep the business going in the face of certain oblivion... but the point of this thread is to warn that you can no longer find out the delivery address behind a PO Box number without an Order from a District Judge - so, don't accept one as a delivery or correspondence address unless (1) you are 100% sure whom you are dealing with, and (2) you know exactly where to find the person or company behind it, if you need to subsequently!