Royal Mail has been given the green light to drop Saturday deliveries of second-class letters and provide services only on alternating weekdays from Monday to Friday under new rules announced by the regulator.
Ofcom said the overhaul of the universal services obligation (USO) reflected changing behaviour of postal users, with fewer letters being sent across the country. The regulator said it could end up saving the postal delivery service between £250m and £425m each year.
First-class letters will still have to be delivered by the next working day, Monday to Saturday, and a cap will continue on the price of a second-class stamp.
Ofcom has lowered targets for first-class post to be delivered the next day from 93% to 90% and second-class to be delivered within three days from 98.5% to 95%. But Ofcom said it was adding a new “enforceable” backstop delivery target, so that 99% of mail had to be delivered no more than two days’ late. The new rules will come into force on 28 July.
Royal Mail has struggled to make deliveries on time, having been fined more than £16m for missed delivery targets since mid-2023. In April it increased the price of a first-class stamp for the sixth time in just over three years, from £1.65 to £1.70, and put up the cost of the second-class service by 2p to 87p.
The shake-up comes months after the Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group completed a £3.6bn takeover of International Distributions Services (IDS), the owner of Royal Mail.
Ofcom’s director for networks and communications, Natalie Black, said: “These changes are in the best interests of consumers and businesses, as urgent reform of the postal service is necessary to give it the best chance of survival.”
IDS has for months been advocating for a pared-back second-class service, arguing that the existing USO was “unsustainable”. Last year, bosses said the network handled 7bn letters in 2024 compared with 20bn a year two decades earlier.
The IDS chief executive, Martin Seidenberg, welcomed the new rules on Thursday, saying it was “good news for customers across the UK as it supports the delivery of a reliable, efficient and financially sustainable universal service”.
However, the Communication Workers Union said that while it “accepts the need for change”, the changes announced by Ofcom were not a solution to all Royal Mail’s problems.
It said: “Royal Mail has been trialling these changes in delivery offices across the country and there are clear problems on the ground.
“These changes are not a ‘one-stop solution’ for the problems in the postal service – the real culprit behind these issues is Royal Mail’s inability to properly recruit and retain staff, which has led to workloads piling up in delivery offices and vital letters being left behind.”
The Liberal Democrats said it looked like Ofcom was letting Royal Mail “off the hook”.
“This is a deeply worrying decision that could leave countless people who rely on these deliveries in the lurch,” said the Lib Dem MP Sarah Olney, the party’s business spokesperson.
“The sorry saga of Royal Mail delays has been going on for far too long, and people are rightly furious. Instead of giving Royal Mail a free pass, Ofcom needs to step in and act by holding this failing service fully accountable.
“Ofcom needs to think again and not let Royal Mail off the hook at the expense of people who expect the bare minimum of their post arriving on time.”
Citizens Advice echoed those concerns, saying that Royal Mail had a “woeful track record of failing to meet delivery targets, all the while ramping up postage costs. Today, Ofcom missed a major opportunity to bring about meaningful change.”
Tom MacInnes, the director of policy at Citizens Advice, said: “Pushing ahead with plans to slash services and relax delivery targets in the name of savings won’t automatically make letter deliveries more reliable or improve standards.”
