Royal Mail introduces gay marriage titles to postage system

Letters can now be officially addressed to 'Mr and Mr' and 'Mrs and Mrs' after the Royal Mail introduced the titles to its postage system.

The move came after customers complained there was no option on the company's online postal system to address post to gay and lesbian couples.

Ruth Tidmarsh told the Daily Mirror she was astonished when she attempted to input 'Mrs and Mrs' in when trying to send a parcel to her married lesbian friends - but the system said she had made an error.

She contacted the Royal Mail to flag up her concerns, as did gay and lesbian lobby group Stonewall, and mail bosses promised to change the system as soon as possible.

A statement from the Royal Mail said: "Once this oversight was brought to our attention, we made changes to our online systems to allow customers to choose the combination of titles for address labels that best describes their household, whether that's Mr and Mrs, Mr and Mr, Ms and Ms and so on.

"We're not aware of any previous complaints, but when we heard a customer was unable to place the order they wanted to, we were pleased to make the change."

Ms Tidmarsh said she was "so very pleased to have nudged Royal Mail into the 21st century".

A spokesperson for Stonewall said: "It’s important that goods and services are completely inclusive of all people, no matter what their sexual orientation.

"Royal Mail are a Stonewall Diversity Champion and we were encouraged to see them act so quickly when contacted about an issue involving their postal labels."