Letter volumes fall by a third delivering £180m loss for Royal Mail | Business

Delivering parcels and letters to every address in the UK piled up losses of £180 million for Royal Mail during the spring and summer.

The privatised postal operator said the extent of the losses showed that the universal service obligation, delivering nationwide on a one-price-goes-anywhere basis, had to end. The company signed up to the requirement when it was privatised.

The plunge into the red in the six months to the end of September had many causes in a period dominated by the pandemic. Royal Mail reported an unprecedented 33 per cent fall in letter volumes, a market that has been in a chronic decline for years because of the rise of emails and electronic messaging but that, hitherto, had been falling at single-digit percentages.