New post box to take parcels and run using solar energy

A POST box in Binfield Heath will become one of Oxfordshire’s first “post boxes of the future”.

The post box in Arch Hill is being upgraded by Royal Mail to an automated solar-powered system with a drop-down drawer in which to post parcels as big as a shoebox.

The existing post box, which is situated close to the village post office, has been taped over with a sign fixed to it reading: “Out of service. Automated system coming soon”.

In the coming weeks, the post box will be available for sending and returning labelled parcels, as well as posting letters through a separate slot.

The post box will be fitted with a solar panel, positioned due south for optimal sunlight, to power the scanner and drawer.

In what Royal Mail has billed the “biggest redesign” of its post box in 175 years, the new Binfield Heath post box will be one of 3,500 being rolled out across the UK following a pilot in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire earlier this year.

Other post boxes across Oxfordshire are also due to be converted. Binfield Heath Parish Council has said it was not consulted about the change.

Chairman Paul Rollason said: “Why we weren’t informed in the first place, which I don’t understand.

“Why do you need a parcel box outside the post office where people take their parcels to? If people have parcels to return, they go into the post office. We need to support the post office as much as we can.

“Royal Mail talk about closing post offices and we don’t want that.

“If people naturally go into the post office, why would they go to use a newfangled, solar-powered machine which is probably complicated to use unless you’ve used it a couple of times before, when we’ve got a post office on the road opposite?

“They could have consulted us, and we could have consulted our parishioners fairly quickly for them.

“It seems pointless to me because we have a functioning post office — I can understand that, in the middle of nowhere, it’s probably a good idea. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Vice-chair of the parish council Elisabeth Ransom said she had struggled to find more information about the change. She said: “No one in the village knows anything at all, no one in the post office or on the parish council has been informed or consulted.

“There are no timelines or contact points offered. I have never felt so unable to find out the merest detail from anyone.

“It might be good for a busy town centre with long queues for posting parcels but this is a small rural village with its own post office and parcel counter just across the road from the post-box and we need to keep our own post office busy.

“The biggest thing is that no-one consulted anybody here to ask if we wanted it. We are very concerned about keeping our post office busy and this new post box won’t help.”

A Royal Mail spokeswoman said: “Our new post boxes of the future offer another convenient way for customers in Binfield Heath and elsewhere to access Royal Mail’s services, alongside home delivery and collection, our customer service points, post office branches, lockers and Collect+ Parcelshops.”