If you’re out when we try to deliver your mail and it’s too big to get through your letterbox, or it needs a signature or payment, we’ll leave a ‘Something for you’ card at the delivery address. This card gives you the address and opening hours of your local delivery office. You can either collect your mail or you can arrange a redelivery online.

Please note that 48 working hours notice is required for a redelivery. If your item is due to be returned prior to this you will need to collect it from the Delivery office.

If you can’t pick up your mail, someone else can do it for you - all they need to do is take proof of your identity and address. You also have the option to have your mail delivered to a different address, or to a local Post Office™ for a small fee. To find out more, go to Redelivery.

For security reasons, Special Delivery™ and Royal Mail Tracked® items cannot be redelivered to another address.

We make every effort to make sure you get your mail, so we keep it for 18 days. After that, we have to return it to the sender if there’s a readable address on the outside. If we do have to return anything, we’ll attach a sticker explaining why we couldn’t deliver.

If there’s no return address on the outside, we send mail to the National Returns Centre in Belfast. They’ll open the mail and return it if the name and address of the sender is inside, as long as it’s not a newspaper, magazine or advertising.

If there is no return address available and the contents meet our storage criteria we may hold the items for up to four months (for First class, Second class or Recorded Signed For™ it’s two months) pending claims via customer services. If it’s not claimed within that time, unfortunately we’ll have to dispose of it.

Elsewhere on royalmail.com

Undeliverable mail? Take a look at the other reasons we might not be able to deliver your mail.