[MovedtoBolton]

As recently as the 80's local first class mail was extracted from early collections and delivered on the second delivery. However increases in posted mail volumes it became impossible to get all local mails back to the local office in time to ensure that all local mails got the same level of service. The advent of new generation sorting machines and improvements in national networks meant that very little mail (an average of only 11 letters per delivery) was hitting the second delivery and these were invariably second class letters. Simple maths dictated that if you were paying the postman 2 hours wages to deliver mail with a revenue value of only a couple of quid at best - Royal Mail had to do something about it. They did initially attempt to reinstate the earlier standard of the 09:30 last letter but this would have meant reducing the vast majority of postmen to part time contracts. Of course there are many part timers there now but also many full timers were retained as a result of getting all the days mail into one longer delivery.

Source of my evidence... 20 years service as a postman then supervisor then senior manager in Accrington and across the North West.