Royal Mail won’t deliver to my village because the road is ‘too dangerous’

A disabled retired teacher has said she is “livid” after the Royal Mail said that they would no longer deliver post to her isolated hamlet as the narrow country road leading up to it was “too dangerous”.

Val Bennallick, 62, who has multiple sclerosis, found out that postmen will no longer deliver mail to her and the seven other residents of Essworthy, a hamlet on the outskirts of Hatherleigh in east Devon, more than a month after the service paused deliveries in December. She said she had been told that she would have to drive seven miles to Okehampton to collect her post.

“Over the last two years, everybody who lives in a place like ours is slowly being cut off from the system and either has to have a postbox put up somewhere else or collect their mail from Okehampton, which is a 14-mile round trip from here,” she said.

“I don’t want to be cut off from the mail, but I wasn’t told for over a month. You think to yourself, how on earth can that happen? It’s just ridiculous. After a month, they said it was too unsafe to come down here and that they’re very sorry, but it was also too unsafe to let me know.

“The attitude seems to be that ‘oh, you know, one day if we stop somebody’s delivery, one day they’ll wonder why they’re not getting any post and they’ll come in search of it’.”

Bennallick, a retired teacher, who drives a Ford Fiesta, acknowledged that the road leading up to the hamlet “wasn’t a good lane” but said that residents went in and out every day.

“The oil deliveries come in and out. There isn’t a tradesman or anything who won’t come down here, apart from the Royal Mail,” she said. “To me, it’s a vital service. I do a lot of things online but some things have to be sent to me, like labels for my regular blood tests.”

Benallick complained to Royal Mail in a number of emails, including one to Emma Gilthorpe, its chief executive, in which she described the service’s treatment of her as “unbelievable, unprofessional, uncaring and downright disgusting”.

She wrote: “All the upset and stress this has caused would be bad enough for any young, fit person but I have a number of health issues including multiple sclerosis and this has made me ill having to deal with all this and the prospect of having to travel 14 miles to try and get answers and I fear also having to do that same trip for the rest of my life to get my post just fills me with dread and despair.”

In response to Bennallick’s complaints, a Royal Mail employee apologised for the problems she faced in receiving her letters. They said that they had contacted the local delivery office manager to see how the matter could be resolved as they were “aware that the lane approach to your property is unsafe and the safety of our employees is paramount”.

Bennallick is now awaiting a response from the delivery office manager.

It was announced last week that Royal Mail would be allowed to scrap deliveries for second-class letters on Saturday and reduce the service to alternate weekdays under plans put forward by the regulator Ofcom.

Ofcom said it had provisionally concluded that the changes, while keeping first-class deliveries on six days a week, would put the universal service on a more sustainable footing while protecting the features that matter most to people.

However, the Gift Card Association, which represents a £1.5 billion sector including retailers, publishers and printers, called for a parliamentary inquiry into the decision.

Last year, the Royal Mail wrote a letter to Okehampton town council apologising for slow postal service after residents expressed concerns about delays. In the letter, seen by the Okehampton Times, a Royal Mail employee said that staff shortages and sickness at the Okehampton delivery office had been responsible for the delays.

A spokesman for Royal Mail said: “Deliveries were suspended due to concerns from the local team about the poor quality of the private road. We are sorry that this was not communicated to Mrs Bennallick. We are reassessing these deliveries as a matter of urgency and will work with Mrs Bennallick to provide a solution.”