The UK’s ‘not good enough’ privatised mail service is being allowed to get worse by the regulator.
Royal Mail has been fined more than £16 million over the last 18 months by Ofcom – but the regulator’s answer to these failures is to relax the privatised firm’s delivery targets – enshrining its failures as part of its Universal Service Obligation (USO) requirements.
So the company that fails to get either first- or second-class letters to their destinations on time may have its next-day delivery target for first-class post reduced from 93 per cent to 90 per cent, and the target for second-class mail arriving within three days reduced from 98.5 per cent to 95 per cent.
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In addition, it will only have to deliver second-class letters and parcels every other weekday, and not on Saturdays. First-class letters and parcels will continue to be delivered six days a week, from Monday to Saturday.
Royal Mail currently handles only a fraction of the letters it handled in the past, with the amount falling from 20 billion in 2004-5 to 6.6 billion last year. This would represent a fall in income if first-class stamp prices had not been hiked five times since 2022 alone, from 85p to £1.65. Second-class stamps have risen in price from 66p to 85p.
The firm is still making a loss, but Ofcom said making changes to second-class deliveries could save Royal Mail between £250m and £425m.
So these proposals are intended not to improve the service – it will intentionally worsen – but to improve profitability for shareholders. These priorities are wrong.
Royal Mail should never have been privatised by David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government.
It should be returned to public ownership and run as a non-profit organisation – but you know that will not happen as long as the government is run by Keir Starmer’s pseudo-Tory ‘Labour’ Party.
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‘Not good enough’ privatised mail service is being allowed to get worse
The UK’s ‘not good enough’ privatised mail service is being allowed to get worse by the regulator.
Royal Mail has been fined more than £16 million over the last 18 months by Ofcom – but the regulator’s answer to these failures is to relax the privatised firm’s delivery targets – enshrining its failures as part of its Universal Service Obligation (USO) requirements.
So the company that fails to get either first- or second-class letters to their destinations on time may have its next-day delivery target for first-class post reduced from 93 per cent to 90 per cent, and the target for second-class mail arriving within three days reduced from 98.5 per cent to 95 per cent.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
In addition, it will only have to deliver second-class letters and parcels every other weekday, and not on Saturdays. First-class letters and parcels will continue to be delivered six days a week, from Monday to Saturday.
Royal Mail currently handles only a fraction of the letters it handled in the past, with the amount falling from 20 billion in 2004-5 to 6.6 billion last year. This would represent a fall in income if first-class stamp prices had not been hiked five times since 2022 alone, from 85p to £1.65. Second-class stamps have risen in price from 66p to 85p.
The firm is still making a loss, but Ofcom said making changes to second-class deliveries could save Royal Mail between £250m and £425m.
So these proposals are intended not to improve the service – it will intentionally worsen – but to improve profitability for shareholders. These priorities are wrong.
Royal Mail should never have been privatised by David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government.
It should be returned to public ownership and run as a non-profit organisation – but you know that will not happen as long as the government is run by Keir Starmer’s pseudo-Tory ‘Labour’ Party.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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