For six days of the week the Royal Mail has its people on every street and in every community of the UK. Now its 120,000 postal workers are to help find missing people by receiving picture alerts on the handheld scanners they use to track and sign for deliveries.
Each year around a quarter of a million people go missing. The Royal Mail is the first organisation to offer up its communication channels to the national charity Missing People and the police authorities with which it works. Currently, 123,000 people directly receive child rescue alerts and the new partnership with Royal Mail will effectively double this.
High-risk alerts for vulnerable children and adults will be distributed by the Royal Mail to the most relevant delivery and collection routes, reaching the postmen and women who know the area and are most likely to encounter the missing person. If a search goes nationwide, the Royal Mail will broadcast alerts across its entire network, including the 1,800 television screens in its offices.
The unusual partnership came about after a postman, Vincent Micallef, discovered that a young girl had gone missing when he was delivery post to a nursery in London. He immediately rang around his colleagues, knowing they were out on the streets and could make a difference in how long it would take to find the child. Thankfully, she was found by the police. But the incident encouraged Vincent to see if this approach could be extended, and a year later the partnership with Missing People was born.
Sue Whalley, chief operations officer at the Royal Mail, said: “Royal Mail’s postmen and women are out in the community six days a week, across the country. We are all very aware of the trauma experienced by the families and communities of missing people, particularly children. We want to use our unique position to support this important service and perhaps help to reunite families with their missing loved ones.”
