After being fined last year for poor record, the Royal Mail is investing £500 million to reduce their number of late deliveries - promising to meet new delivery targets by next May.
In order to achieve this goal, second-class post will now be delivered every other weekday and scrapped completely on Saturdays. The Royal Mail has been piloting this new letter delivery pattern since July, with plans to roll it out nationwide in May.
There will be no changes to first-class post, which will still be delivered daily from Monday to Saturday, or to parcels, which remain unchanged, continuing at up to seven days a week.
The Royal Mail was fined a record amount of £21 million by Ofcom last October, after delivering just 77% of first-class post and 92.5% of second-class post on time between 2024-25. The courier says that its £500m investment includes an agreement to allow 6,000 part-time postal workers to increase their average weekly hours if needed.
Despite providing a slower service than expected, the Royal Mail still increased its stamp prices recently, with first-class stamps rising to £1.80 and second-class to 91p. In February, the Royal Mail blamed high levels of staff sickness and stormy weather after complaints over missed delivery rounds and late letters.
The Royal Mail hopes to improve first-class next-day delivery to 85% within nine months, before reaching the 90% target set by Ofcom within a year. The company also vows to deliver 95% of second-class letters in three days by May next year.
The shake-up comes one year after the Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group completed a £3.6 billion takeover of International Distribution Services, the owner of Royal Mail.