Twice-daily post collections are going to cut back, the Post Office has announced.

It says it is making the changes to its island-wide collection times as part of a ’business efficiency’ project - and will have little impact on customers.

Currently many post boxes in residential areas have collections twice daily at 6am and 5pm, while rural areas have one collection per day at varied times.

All mail that is collected from post boxes before 6am destined for Isle of Man addresses is delivered the same working day, while any mail posted after this time is either delivered the next day for local delivery or dispatched off-island on the mail plane.

But monitoring of the volume of mail posted in each post box over the past six months has revealed that for the majority of 6am collections between Tuesday and Saturday, about two-thirds of the boxes are either empty or contain less than five items when they are emptied.

As a result the Post Office says it will be reducing the frequency of its 6am collections Tuesday to Saturday, while maintaining a collection of all 6am post boxes on Mondays.

No post boxes will be removed from their current location.

Eleven post boxes will continue to operate 6am collections Monday-Saturday. These will be at Douglas Delivery Office in Spring Valley, Braddan; the post offices in Onchan, Kirk Michael, Peel, Castletown, Port Erin and Laxey; the Northern Delivery Office in Ramsey; Shoprite, Derby Road, Peel; Southern Delivery Office, Ballasalla; and Main Road, Crosby.

There will be no impact on jobs but the changes to collection times will allow overtime costs to be reduced. There will be additional collections at Christmas.

Post box volumes will be monitored and if needed, further changes made in future.

The reduced collection service will come into effect at the end of this month.