Pictured: Lincoln Austin

Nottingham based integrated agency Perspektiv have welcomed moves by the Government to cut down on the tidal wave of junk mail which deluges households in the UK. According to a recent survey, every home in Britain receives 450 pieces of junk mail a year, a total of 11 billion items, which costs more than £50million a year in disposal charges.

From next year, a new website will allow people to ban Royal Mail from delivering unsolicited adverts and leaflets to their homes. This will make the present system much simpler as people currently have to visit three different websites to opt out of receiving unsolicited mail.

Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman said the website would be launched next April as part of a deal with the Direct Marketing Association which represents around 900 companies, including Perspektiv.

Perspektiv, who produce a variety of direct marketing campaigns for their clients every year, are certainly in favour of the change as managing director, Lincoln Austin said: "This move is good for the direct marketing industry. Any mail which is unwanted is junk mail. It therefore makes it even more important that people in the industry make sure that they understand the needs of their customers. Only then can they send out mailings which are wanted - relevant, informative and timely. We work with our clients to help them do this at the moment, and we'll be working even harder in the future to help them engage with their customers."

Lincoln went on to add, "Companies that send out unsolicited, irrelevant and poorly targeted mail give the industry a bad name. All responsible businesses that want to build long-term relationships with customers will welcome this development."