To ensure the universal service remains sustainable and delivers what people need, Ofcom are proposing to allow Royal Mail to deliver Second Class letters on alternate weekdays. The safeguards for those with urgent mail would be to delivery First Class mail six days a week at the same price throughout the UK, and a price cap on Second Class stamps.
Second Class proposed delivery days would rotate each week with half postcodes receiving mail three days a week one week and the remainder two days, swapping over the following week:
- Week one – Delivery on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
- Week two – Delivery on Tuesday and Thursday
Ofcom are also proposing lowering delivery targets for both First Class and Second Class letters:
- For First Class mail from 93% to 90% delivered next-day
- For Second Class mail from 98.5% to 95% delivered within three days
They also propose introducing new backstop targets which would ensure that, even if letters miss the primary target, consumers have confidence that they will arrive in a reasonable period of time:
- For First Class mail, 99.5% would have to be delivered within three days of posting
- For Second Class mail, 99.5% would have to be delivered within five days of posting
Ofcom say that the service expectation would still be for items to be delivered within three working days of collection – but not on Saturdays. The reality is that Royal Mail haven’t been achieving this for some time and been fined by Ofcom for the past two years for service failures.
However, even Ofcom acknowledge that relaxing the delivery standards for Second Class letters won’t in itself be sufficient to make the long term future of the nations postal service financially sustainable.
We have assessed postal users’ needs and provisionally concluded that the proposed new service would continue to meet them. Indeed, only 4% of users think they would be very significantly impacted by the proposed changes.
We estimate this change would enable Royal Mail to realise annual net cost savings of between £250m and £425m with successful implementation. This could enable it to improve reliability and redeploy existing resources to growth areas such as parcels.
However, reforming these obligations is unlikely to be enough on its own to secure the longer-term financial sustainability of universal service. Royal Mail must invest in its network, become more efficient and improve its service levels in both parcels and letters.
– Ofcom
The impact on ecommerce will be significant for those who post light weight items via Second Class post – estimating delivery days will become ever more complex as it will depend on the destination post code and whether that week Second Class is to be delivered on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or on Tuesday and Thursday. The biggest impact is likely to be for large letters which accounts for a huge amount of goods from DVDs to t-shirts and other small items.
The reality is that there is such a gulf between the cost of First Class and Second Class postage items that many will find no easy alternatives and consumers will simply have to become accustomed to slightly slower deliveries.
One Response
Slightly slower deliveries and every other day, if only, I’m lucky if I get one delivery of letters a week. In the run up to Xmas it was one delivery every two weeks. Royal Mail management don’t give a stuff about letters any more, from what I’m told they have told the posties to concentrate on parcels only and forget letters. I have no problem with the posties who do the actual work they obviously do what they are told, it’s the management that is the problem. Ofcom are a waste of time as well, they should be telling Royal Mail management that they HAVE to deliver 2nd class letters every other day but they obviously haven’t.