Hole lot of worry in safety row at King's Lynn delivery office

A West Norfolk parish councillor says people are still being put at risk several months after he fell in a hole in the ground outside Lynn’s main postal delivery office.

Norman Grief, from Congham, has launched legal proceedings against the Royal Mail for injuries he sustained in the incident outside the premises on Austin Fields last October.

Royal Mail has denied any liability for what happened and insists it has no record of any other complaints about incidents in the area.

But Mr Grief says the company has failed to fix the problem, despite telling him they would do so.

And he is worried that other people may be more severely injured unless the hole, which he estimates is up to a foot deep, is fixed.

He said: “I hurt myself at the time. I went through hell for a week or two afterwards.

“They promised me, the manager did, they were going to fill it in and they never have.”

Mr Grief suffered leg and elbow injuries when he fell on an area of grass outside the branch on October 8 last year.

He said he had been going there to make sure an item was delivered in that day’s post rather than the following day’s deliveries.

But a letter from the Royal Mail to his solicitor, which the Lynn News has seen, claimed he was “clearly the author of his own misfortune” by not using the pavement.

The company has called for the claim to be withdrawn, arguing there was “no evidence” they had failed to take reasonable care of his safety.

The document added: “He knowingly placed himself at foreseeable risk by choosing not to follow the designated walkway.”

But Mr Grief said that he had walked over the grass to reach the entrance to the delivery office as the pavement was blocked by a group of people, who then helped him after he fell.

He added: “It’s a natural thing to do to walk across the grass if there is nothing to stop you.”

A Royal Mail spokesman said yesterday: “At the time of the incident in October 2018, Mr Grief mentioned the incident to the Delivery Office but did not report any injury.

“The uneven ground in the grassed area near the Delivery Office is not on the customer walkway and Royal Mail has no previous records or complaints of any incidents in the area.”