On 18th February 2026 the Daily Mail published a question about letter boxes in its ‘Answers to Correspondents’ Section: ‘How many Victorian letter boxes are still in use across the country and do they have a preservation order on them?’

LBSG Chair Andrew R Young responded with the answer which was published in the paper on 2nd March.

How many Victorian letterboxes are still in use across the country and do they have a preservation order on them?

I can advise that there are nearly 6,200 Victorian letter boxes still in use across the UK – about 4,000 are mounted in walls and the remainder are pillar boxes. There are currently about 115,000 boxes in use, so boxes carrying the Queen Victoria cypher amount to just over five per cent of the total.

In the past some old letter boxes were listed, but nowadays they are protected by a 2015 joint policy statement by Royal Mail and Historic England, whereby all post boxes in operational service will normally be retained at their existing locations, and boxes will only be listed in exceptional circumstances.

Andrew Young, Chairman, The Letter Box Study Group, Warrington