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France is to move to three-days-a-week letter deliveries from the start of next year as ministers in Britain resist pleas from Royal Mail to axe Saturday postal rounds.
Letters will also be delivered within three days in a major shake-up that French bosses say will reduce La Poste’s carbon footprint.
Next-day deliveries will only be available if customers email the text to La Poste, which will then print out the letter at a local branch before passing it to a postal worker.
Alongside Germany, the UK is now an outlier in Europe by sticking to a six-day-a-week letters service. Germany’s plans to reduce to a five-day-a-week service under Angela Merkel have stalled under successor Olaf Scholz.
Royal Mail is facing resistance from ministers to drop down to a five-days-a-week letters service. Saturday deliveries are a legal obligation on the FTSE 250 company, meaning any changes must be agreed by Parliament.
But Grant Shapps, the Business Secretary, is refusing to agree to the changes, leading to a stand-off with Royal Mail chairman Keith Williams.
Mr Williams, the former chief executive of British Airways, has said first-class stamps will have to rise “considerably” to pay for Royal Mail deliveries on Saturday.
He said: “The cost to us is driven in part by [the fact that the] volume of letters has declined. You’re delivering the same number of letters over six days when you could be doing it over five. So that is forcing up stamp prices.”
Under the equivalent to the UK’s “universal service obligation” – regulations that bind Royal Mail to delivering six-days-a-week – other countries have changed the law to significantly reduce postal rounds for letters.
Italy has moved to an every other day service in rural areas, Norway runs two rounds a week and Denmark only delivers standard class letters once a week.
Royal Mail has estimated it could save between £125m and £225m by scrapping Saturday letter deliveries and says consumers’ needs would not be affected.
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