Dear all Does anyone have any knowledge of what laws/regulations are being broken by posting offensive material, specifically: 1) decomposing food 2) excrement (cannot say if human or animal as we have not examined too closely!) 3) waste material. I have agreed a risk management strategy with affected parts of the business to minimise the risk of our staff or others being made ill (physically or emotionally) with which they are as happy as they can be given the circumstances and this has been implemented. I am curious as to what law/regulation is being broken - if any. Thanks Sara

The prohibited items referred to by Ron are specified under the latest UK postal scheme under which the Royal Mail can prosecute the sender. In addition the sending of excrement would come under the Malicious Communications Act 1988 Section 1 which makes it an offence ..to send ..any article..of a grossly offensive nature. This type of "communication" arrived a few times at my last employer and we always referred the item to the police. And of course the regs covering transport of hazardous substances....

Thanks Granlund400555 for the name of the Act - I will look that up. And thanks to Ron and Bilbo for your suggestions - we will of course engage the police as appropriate. Cheers all.

Report and leave it to Royal Mail. They are far more able to deal with this than you are and have well-established protocols for taking action because of the risk for their staff. They understand the legislation and are considered the arbiters of what is safe for carriage and how it should be carried - not least as it is their sorting equipment and staff that so effectively trash your most delicate parcels! I assume, since you're the in retail sector that these 'deliveries' are some sort of protest from disgruntled customers. The other obvious approach is to improve customer service and liaison/complaints handling etc, and to address the root cause(s).