Royal Mail rolls out first of a new generation of solar-powered ‘postboxes of the future’ in Derry

The new design allows customers to send and return parcels - up to the size of a shoebox - through a postbox for the first time

Three of the new postboxes have now been installed by Royal Mail in Derry at Spencer Road Post Office, The Rock Post Office (BT48 7PB) at the bottom of Meadowbank Avenue and the Park Avenue Post Office.

A Royal Mail spokesperson said: "Our postboxes of the future in Derry offer another convenient way for customers to access Royal Mail's services, alongside home delivery and collection, our Customer Service Points, Post Office branches, lockers and Royal Mail Shops.

"We’re pleased to see positive feedback from customers in areas where the new postboxes have already been introduced, and we’re hopeful that Derry residents will find the upgraded postboxes just as useful and convenient.”

Royal Mail said the roll-out represents the biggest design change in 175 years with the new boxes featuring a solar panel and digitally activated drop-down drawer for larger parcels.

And there is a separate slot for letters. The three new boxes in Derry are among the newest to have been installed in the North. Up until very recently the only such boxes operational were in Belfast (3), Holywood, Crumlin, Carrickfergus and Newtownabbey.

In total 3,500 are being rolled out across the UK following a successful pilot in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire in England.

Announcing the initiative last year Jack Clarkson, Managing Director of Out of Home and Commercial Excellence at Royal Mail, said: “We are all sending and returning more parcels than ever before.

"This trend will only continue as online shopping shows no signs of slowing, particularly with the boom of second-hand marketplaces. There are 115,000 postboxes in the UK located within half a mile of 98 per cent of addresses, making them by far the most convenient network of parcel drop-off points in the UK. Our message is clear, if you have a Royal Mail label on your parcel, and it fits, put it in a postbox and we’ll do the rest.”