Why you won't be able to post letters using Royal Mail stamps without a barcode anymore

Stamps featuring the late Queen on a plain background will need a barcode to be valid after July 31, ITV News' Pablo Taylor reports on Monday

Royal Mail has warned that stamps that do not have barcodes are now no longer valid.

From Tuesday 1 August, letters posted without the proper stamp will be treated as having "insufficient postage", meaning recipients will have to pay £1.10 to collect them.

The stamps that will change are ones featuring the late Queen on a plain coloured background.

Special stamps with pictures and Christmas editions without a barcode will continue to be valid and do not need to be swapped out.

How do you swap your stamps before they go out of date?
Stamps that will and won't be accepted for the Swap Out scheme. Credit: The Royal Mail

Luckily, if you have a stockpile of old stamps you can exchange them for new ones with the Royal Mail's swap scheme.

All you need to do is pick up or print out a swap out form. After filling out the form, post it along with your old stamps to the Royal Mail.

Those posting stamps worth less than £200 can simply write Freepost SWAP OUT on the envelope, while those sending more than £200 worth of stamps will need to send them to Royal Mail's Edinburgh address.

If you don't have a printer, you can ask Royal Mail to post a blank form to you or you can collect one from your local Post Office.

The Post Office will not be able to actually swap your stamps for barcoded ones, however.

The forms, addresses, and further details can be found on the Royal Mail's website.

The stamps without a barcode were due to be made defunct at the end of January, but the Royal Mail extended the deadline by six months. The barcoded stamps were introduced last February as part of a move to modernise the service, and to allow enhanced security features, Royal Mail said. It also said barcodes will “enable exciting new services by connecting physical stamps to the digital world”, such as exclusive videos available by scanning the codes in an app.

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