Royal Mail is the single largest deliverer of unaddressed junk mail in the UK; roughly one in four leaflets is pushed through the letter box by the postman. In this section you can find out everything there is to know about the door-to-door 'service'.
Let's start with the most important information. To opt out of leaflets delivered by the postman, you need to contact Royal Mail and ask them for a door-to-door opt-out form. The easiest way to do this via the Junk Buster:
Using Junk Buster, you can at the same time contact two other opt-out schemes: Your Choice (a scheme that can help to further reduce the amount of leaflets coming through the letter box) and the Mailing Preference Service (which can reduce addressed junk mail). More information about these opt-out schemes can be found in our Guide to stamping out junk mail.
Alternatively, you can send an e-mail or write to Royal Mail yourself:
The opt-out form Royal Mail will send you can be found here:
Please note that filling out and sending this form will not speed up the process of opting out. Royal Mail will simply send you a new form to complete – just one example of how needlessly complicated the opt-out process currently is.
After you have completed the form Royal Mail will post to you, your postman should stop delivering unaddressed items within six weeks time.
At the moment, Royal Mail is allowed to deliver three unaddressed items per household per week (a limitation that is likely to be scrapped). The main consequence of opting out is therefore that a 150+ fewer leaflets per annum will be pushed through your letter box.
It should be noted, however, that according to Royal Mail many of the 150+ items are unlikely to be unwanted. The opt-out form therefore warns you that if you decide to opt out, you may miss 'important information from local and national Government'. Our advice is to simply ignore this warning. It is unlikely that important information is ever sent using the door-to-door scheme, if only because more and more people are opting out. If local or national Government has something important to tell you, for instance about elections, they will make sure that the information is widely available. Door-to-door leaflets are just one of many ways in which local and national Government can communicate.