40 annual report 2011 The man stated that the letter, which the local authority had dated 13 November 2007, had not reached his address until 17 November 2007. An error must therefore have been made by either the local authority or the postal service. The Tribunal declined to consider the appeal because it was lodged too late. In the Tribunal’s opinion, there was no information to support the claim that the local authority’s letter had not arrived the day after it was dated. Failure of sickness benefit recipient to attend job centre interview A job centre sent a letter to a sickness benefit recipient summoning her to an ­information meeting. The letter was sent by ordinary first-class post. She failed to attend as requested and therefore the local authority sent her another letter, informing her, among other things, that payment of her sickness benefit had been stopped. The woman turned up at the job centre on the day when she received the letter about the discontinuation of her sickness benefit and stated that she had never received the letter summoning her to an information meeting. The job centre considered the letter to have been sent and to have reached the woman and therefore upheld its decision to stop payments of sickness benefit. The woman’s union appealed the decision, but the Employment Appeals Board reached the same result as the job centre. The two cases show that it is necessary to be able to trust 1) the authorities to ensure that letters are handed over to the postal service (on the day they are dated) and 2) the postal service to ensure that letters arrive (on time). Letters regarded as having arrived within two days Every day, administrative authorities send many letters by ordinary mail. That a letter has arrived means that it has been placed in the addressee’s post box. As soon as the letter has been put in the addressee’s post box, the recipient is responsible for reading the letter and for ensuring that he or she understands its content. In practice, the starting point used to be that a letter sent by first-class post was regarded as having reached the addressee on the day after it had been sent. On 1 January 2009, the National Social Appeals Board changed its practice, and