Letters & Physical Mail

Sending Letters

Letters are a fourth channel on the same messaging subsystem. The platform hands the document to a print and post provider, who prints it, encloses it and posts it.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Communication:

• Letters — the console — compose, queue and track
• Letter Stationery — letterheads and paper definitions
• Postal Address Sources — where addresses are taken from
• Service Methods — the deemed-service rule for each posting class

Why physical mail still matters

For statutory casework it is frequently required rather than preferred. Some notices must be served by post. Some recipients have no email and will never have one. And for anything that may be challenged, a posted letter with a third-party despatch record is stronger evidence than an email you sent yourself.

Providers

GOV.UK Notify, Lob, ClickSend Post and PostGrid. Public sector organisations already using Notify for email and text can add letters on the same account, which is usually the path of least resistance.

Stationery

Letter Stationery defines the letterhead and paper. Configure it once centrally rather than embedding a letterhead in every template — when the logo, the address or the accessibility statement changes, you will want exactly one place to change it.

Addresses

Postal Address Sources defines where the address comes from. An address assembled ad hoc in each template is how letters get sent to an old address long after the record was updated: correcting the record does not correct the template.

Take the address from a defined source, and correcting it once corrects it everywhere.

The dispatch task

Letters queue and are sent by the Letter Dispatch task, which ships disabled and should run every few minutes. Letters sitting unsent are almost always this — the queue is filling and nothing is draining it.

Deadlines and print cut-offs

A letter takes days. Where it discharges a statutory obligation the deadline usually concerns despatch rather than arrival, but confirm which, because the two can be several days apart.

Build the print provider's daily cut-off into your timing. A letter queued at 5pm is not a letter posted that day, and a deadline calculated as though it were will be missed by exactly one day — repeatedly, and always at the worst time.

Worked example

A licensing team must serve a decision notice within five working days. The letter is generated at decision, queued, and despatched by the task within minutes. The despatch confirmation returns from the provider and is stored on the case, and the appeal-window obligation derives from the deemed service date rather than the queue date.

Recommendations

• Configure stationery and address sources before your first letter, not after.
• Know your provider's cut-off time and build it into any deadline calculation.
• Record returned mail against the address, not just the case.
• Do not post what could reasonably be emailed — reserve it for what requires it or what the recipient needs.

Letters in Casework

A letter sent from a case should do three things at once: go out, be evidenced, and satisfy the deadline it exists for.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Communication:

• Letters — the send itself
• Service Methods — the deemed-service rule applied

Architect Panel → Activity:

• Correspondence — the served item on the case file

Architect Panel → Automation:

• Obligations — the deadline the letter discharges

Evidence the despatch

Record the document as sent, the address it went to, and when it was despatched. Keep the document as sent rather than the template — regenerating it later shows the current wording, which is not what the recipient received.

Deemed service

Where the regime deems service a set period after posting, derive that date from the despatch date rather than typing it, in working days where the rule says working days. Record it as what it is — a legal presumption, not an observed fact.

Close the obligation from the send

If the letter discharges an obligation, closing it should follow from the send rather than being a separate step somebody remembers.

An obligation left open after the letter went out is a false breach. A service chasing false breaches quickly stops trusting its own escalations, at which point the whole mechanism has been undermined by an administrative gap.

Returned mail

Letters come back. Have a route for recording that an address is wrong, because an address you keep writing to after it bounced is one you will be asked about — particularly where the correspondence carried legal consequence and the recipient says they never received it.

Worked example — a council

A housing benefit overpayment notice is served by second class post. The despatch confirmation returns and is filed as correspondence. The service method adds two working days for deemed service, and the 28-day appeal window is an obligation derived from that date. When the resident appeals on day 30, the file shows the deemed date, the despatch confirmation and the notice exactly as sent.

Worked example — a legal practice

A letter before action goes by email and post the same day, recorded as two service events with their own methods and deemed dates. If the email address proves wrong the postal service still stands, and the matter file holds both.

Recommendations

• Serve by two methods where consequences are serious, and record both separately.
• Derive windows from the deemed date, not the despatch date, unless the regime says otherwise.
• Never regenerate a served document to answer a query. Produce the stored one.
• Link the letter to the obligation so the deadline closes itself.