Deliver at all costs: How insecure pay and conditions for delivery drivers are failing parcel consumers

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https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/polic ... zXlYQ-CpGQ

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Executive summary
Now a staple of UK retail, parcel deliveries help many of us access everything from luxury goods to medicines. Online shopping made up 27.4% of all retail value in Great Britain last year and employment in the sector has grown rapidly as a result - the Recruitment and Employment Confederation identified delivery drivers and couriers as one of its top three occupations for vacancy growth in July 2026.

But rates of consumer problems in this market remain strikingly high. Over five years of monitoring, we’ve never seen fewer than 1 in 3 people have an issue with their latest home delivery. Parcels are frequently left on doorsteps or in insecure places, arrive damaged, or go missing. [1] Disabled people struggle to secure accessible deliveries. [2] And this lack of progress is also mirrored in Ofcom’s market monitoring data.

In 2023, Ofcom introduced new rules to address this high rate of detriment, strengthening standards around accessibility and introducing new guidance on complaints processes. Yet, the evidence has shown little impact on the ground. In February, the regulator wrote to parcel companies highlighting the need to address this.

But new guidance may be missing the mark because it overlooks a crucial factor: the role played by employment conditions prevalent in the parcels market. A significant proportion of the growing numbers of delivery drivers are self-employed. They face variable pay and insecure contracts which create intense pressure to prioritise speed - often at the expense of service quality.

This is creating a disconnect between what people want from their parcel services and the models used in practice. Previous research we’ve conducted found that consumers prioritise reliability over speed for their parcel deliveries - our polling showed that 21% of consumers pick reliability as their number one priority (compared to just 9% for speed). [3] However, consumers rarely get to choose the carrier which delivers their purchases, limiting their ability to express these priorities and punish poor performers.

With minimal evidence on the conditions that shape self-employed delivery drivers’ goals and incentives publicly available, we commissioned Spark Insight to look at the role of driver working conditions and their impact on consumer outcomes in more detail. Based on a survey and interviews with 50 self-employed delivery drivers, we find that:

Driver payment models operate on highly pressurised targets and very low margins. Only a quarter of the 50 self-employed drivers earned the equivalent of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) or above, after accounting for running costs and unpaid time spent working. Drop-off targets left an average of just 3 minutes 9 seconds for each delivery.

These working practices have consequences for consumers. The clear incentive for many couriers is to leave the item as quickly as possible, with little regard to whether a customer has time to get to the door or whether the location is fully secure. Three quarters of drivers agreed that ‘the pressure to deliver quickly makes it difficult to provide good customer service”.

Employment models are a particular barrier to meeting new accessibility standards. Time margins are not sufficient for drivers to meet any additional delivery requirements for disabled consumers. Just one of 50 drivers had received training on accessibility needs.