Condition 1 of Royal Mail’s licence defines the universal postal service as at least one delivery and one collection of relevant postal packets every working day. There are no requirements in terms of the times at which deliveries or collections should be made.
Royal Mail sets its final collection times from post boxes according to internal standard known as ‘Time Specification’. The standard was implemented in 1996, with only some minor alterations made since. The current specification is:
Final box collections
Commercial 18.30 to 19.30
Town 17.30 to 18.30
Rest of UK 16.00 to 17.30
Deep Rural 09.00 to 16.00
In 1996, the delivery system looked very different from how it does today. Prior to Single Daily Delivery (SDD) 90 percent of customers received a first delivery of mail by 9.30am; under the current system, customers in urban areas should receive their post by lunchtime, rural customers by 3pm.
In the past couple of years, Royal Mail have also brought forward final collection times- in many cases by several hours. Postwatch asked Postcomm to amend Royal Mail’s licence to prevent this occurring. Instead, Postcomm decided that Royal Mail should seek to ensure, wherever possible, that there are no final collection times before midday.
