Royal Mail has launched an inquiry into dog attacks after revealing postal workers are suffering up to 4000 attacks every year.
The attacks often result in severe injuries and "considerable trauma" and highlights the case for legislation to tackle dangerous dogs, said campaigners.
The independent inquiry was announced by Royal Mail chairman Donald Brydon, with the aim of making specific recommendations to reduce the number of dog attacks.
Mr Brydon said: "It is an offence to decency that good people should suffer these attacks when carrying out their daily jobs."
Dave Joyce, national safety officer of the Communication Workers' Union, which has been campaigning for years for measures to tackle dangerous dogs, said: "This is a very positive and welcome development at a key moment."
The inquiry will be led by former high court judge Sir Gordon Langley and will study the number of attacks, currently running at between 3500 and 4000 a year.
Almost 400 postmen and women have taken time off sick in the past year after being attacked by a dog, while 4100 working days have been lost, costing Royal Mail £400,000.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article