Last month the Business and Trade Committee launched a snap investigation into Royal Mail’s letter delivery service, after widespread reports of late and missing letters, or letters bunched together for delivery days after they were due. This has led to important notices, medical appointments or celebrations being missed, and concerns that the essential letter service is being de-prioritised in favour of the more lucrative parcel service.
Read the original letter sent to the Royal Mail (sent 16 February)
Read the Royal Mail's response (received 10 March)
In response to the Committee’s initial inquiries, Royal Mail admits they don’t record specific data on when they deprioritise letters in favour of parcels. Their "letter sorting technology is designed to group letters together due for delivery on a specified day” but they insist “we would not hold back mail if that meant it would miss its target delivery date”.
But Royal Mail is missing its targets. Royal Mail leans on overall figure of 92.1% of mail delivered on time – but this obscures the fact that only 74.9% of First Class mail was delivered on time so far this year against a target of 93%. That translates into approximately 126 million First Class letters arriving late over the year.
- Around 126 million First Class letters on track to be delivered late this year - a quarter of all that were sent – despite a new price increase from next month, to £1.80 for a First Class stamp (almost three times the cost of ten years ago).
- Royal Mail admits they don’t record specific data on the instances where they deprioritise letters in favour of parcels, though statistical analysis on meeting their regulatory standards across their 1200 delivery centres does show them that 99.5% address coverage would be need needed as a proxy for hitting the First Class quality target of 90% next-day delivery.
- The existing Second Class service is performing better than First Class even if still way off target at 90.2% delivered on time within three days – translating to around 93 million being delivered late across the year.
- In October 2025 Ofcom fined Royal Mail £21million, saying its improvement plan was “urgent” - but five months later Royal Mail are still saying they can’t publish it until talks with postal worker union CWU conclude.
The 500 year-old Royal Mail’s buyout was cleared by shareholders in April last year, after new owners EP Group gave the Government legal undertakings that they would maintain the “one price goes anywhere” Universal Service Obligation. Ahead of the deal, EP Group’s CEO Daniel Křetínský told the BBC he would honour the letter delivery service "for as long as I am alive".
In July Ofcom announced significant changes to the USO, with Second Class deliveries dropped down to every second day, Monday to Friday only. Royal Mail would get new “backstop” targets to for mail it delivers up to two days late, and report against those too.