First class stamp price will rocket to £1.80 next month as second class rises to 91p after Royal Mail again missed delivery targets

A first class stamp will rise in price by 10p next month despite Royal Mail’s repeated failure to meet delivery targets.

First class stamps will cost £1.80 from April 7 while second class stamps will rise by 4p to 91p.

It means the cost of a first class stamp has now more than doubled in the last six years after eight rises, while second class stamps have seen six price hikes.

Royal Mail admitted last month it had missed delivery targets again in the most recent quarter.

Anne Pardoe, head of policy at Citizens Advice, said: More than half a decade has gone by since the company met its delivery targets and people still face a gamble, with many uncertain if their important documents or letters like medical appointments will arrive on time.

‘Things only risk getting worse when cuts to delivery days and reduced performance targets come into full effect.’

She said Ofcom ‘simply cannot wave through these increases any longer’ and higher prices ‘must come with higher standards’.

Ms Pardoe said stamp price rises should be tied to Royal Mail’s performance on the doorstep.

The company has been called to face MPs who have raised concerns about ‘chaos’ in the postal service since Christmas and suggestions that some letters are being delivered in ‘batches’.

Royal Mail said the stamp rises reflected the continued increase in delivery costs as letter volumes fell and the number of addresses increased.

Richard Travers, managing director of letters at Royal Mail, said: ‘We always consider price changes very carefully, balancing affordability with the rising cost of delivering mail.

‘On average, UK adults now spend just £6.50 each year on stamps and there are 70% fewer letters sent than 20 years ago.

‘In the meantime, the number of addresses we deliver to has increased by four million to 32 million addresses across the UK.’

The last time Royal Mail met its annual target for delivering first-class post on time was in 2019-20.

The firm – whose owner International Distribution Services (IDS) was bought last June for £3.6billion by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group – repeated its call to ‘urgently move forward’ with reforms.

Ofcom last year cleared Royal Mail to scrap second-class letter deliveries on Saturdays and change the service to every other weekday, changes which have been introduced as a pilot across 35 delivery offices.

A first class stamp has more than doubled in price across eight separate rises in the last six years

But the company has been in intensive talks with the Communications Workers Union (CWU) after failing to agree on how to roll out the universal service changes across its 1,200-strong network.

Month-long talks ended on March 2 without agreement and have been extended for two weeks.

Mr Travers said: ‘To protect the service for the future we need to urgently move forward with implementing universal service reform to support a more modern, more reliable and more sustainable service for our customers.’

Royal Mail argued that despite the price rises, UK stamps still cost less than the European average of £1.56 for a second-class stamp and £1.93 for first class.