Removal of post boxes hits rural areas in France hardest

People in isolated areas say they feel increasingly cut-off by the removal of post boxes, which has accelerated in recent years as fewer people send letters. We look at why this is happening and why it will continue.

In 2020, France’s supreme auditing body La Cour des Comptes ruled that the number of post boxes was a financial drain on the postal service.

People increasingly rely on email, while letters, it said, only accounted for 18% of the post office’s earnings.

La Cour said that to ensure the financial future of the French postal service, La Poste and to protect its 250,000 employees, productivity must be made a priority.

For several years now, Amazon has been the largest client of La Poste. At certain times of the year, it can deliver up to four million packages a day for the American giant.

As a consequence, the number of post boxes has decreased from 131,276 in 2020 to 123,000 in 2023.

If you want to find your nearest post box- or check if it is still there - you can find this information on La Poste’s interactive map here.

A marked decline in rural areas

The decline has been more marked in rural and isolated areas.

In Ardèche (Occitanie) there are now around 600 post boxes for the department’s 354 communes, meaning that many people have to go some distance to find one.

In Aubenas (Ardèche), two more were removed from the town centre in September.

One of these boxes was on the shopfront of Le Radal, a local tabac, which people must increasingly rely on as a de facto public service.

"We are stupefied,” shop owner Florence Vauclare told FranceInfo.

“They expect us to act as a public service, sell stamps for letters, payments and fines, collect fees for hospitals and school canteens and at the same time they remove the public service from the wall outside.”

Read more: 14 things you can do at a tabac in France apart from buy cigarettes

Franck Boitard, manager of the local post office told FranceInfo that the decision to remove post boxes is quite rational.

"In 2008, we delivered 18 billion letters. This year we will be at six billion,” he said.

“66 % of our main activity has been eliminated by the changing ways people communicate and the changing consumer habits. We expect it to be down to three billion in 2030.”

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