We received a petition asking:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to introduce an easy and effective system for opting out of junk mail.”
Details of Petition:
“At present, the good people of Britain have to do at least six different things to reduce the amount of unwanted advertisements they receive. Years of self-regulation by the direct marketing industry has not made it any easier for people to stop junk mail and the amount of junk posted through people’s letterboxes is increasing year by year. The British Government should therefore ‘go Dutch’ and introduce a simple and effective system of opting out of junk mail, similar to the highly successful scheme introduced in the Netherlands in 1994. In Holland, people register with the Mailing Preference Service to stop all (and not just some) addressed advertisements and to put a stop to all unaddressed junk mail the Dutch can get a readily available ‘no junk mail’ sticker. Introducing such a system will put an end to unwanted advertisements, reduce waste and save trees.”
Read the Government’s response
Observations by the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform on the Petition presented by Mr Robert Rijkhoff on unsolicited and junk mail.
Direct advertising mail is a legitimate method of marketing goods and services and Government has no plans to take measures to prohibit or restrict such mail. This form of advertising, for example, generates both extra revenue and traffic volumes for postal operators such as the Royal Mail, creating economies of scale that result in letter postage rates being lower than they would otherwise be.
It is however recognised that some people find unsolicited mail intrusive and annoying. Customers who feel strongly about receiving unsolicited mail can register with the Mailing Preference Service (MPS) (online www.mpsonline.org.uk http://www.mpsonline.org.uk, or by writing to Freepost 22, London W1E 7EZ or phoning 0845 7034599) to have their details removed from mailing lists. The MPS covers around 90% of mailing lists. Member organisations of the MPS undertake to remove from their mailing list the addresses of those people who indicate that they want this done. Those who wish to stop mailings from an organisation that is not part of the MPS or with whom they already have a relationship, such as a bank or building society, must contact the organisation directly, and ask them to stop sending them information. Organisations are obliged to do so by law. The MPS is not designed to stop unaddressed items of mail, direct mail delivered to the door or the delivery of free newspapers; and mail addressed to ‘Occupant’, ‘Resident’ or ‘Homeowner’ is not covered under this scheme.
At present there is no single service that stops ‘door to door’ mail, but the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the trade body covering most of these sorts of companies, is looking into developing such a scheme. Royal Mail is currently the only postal operator to have an opt-out scheme and they point out that they only handle around 25% of such mail. Customers who want to stop the direct mail (’door to door’) carried by Royal Mail can write to the company at the following address: Door-to-Door Opt Outs, Royal Mail, Kingsmead House, Oxpens Road, Oxford, OX1 1RX. Further details on the opt-out scheme can be found on Royal Mail’s website.
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