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Royal Mail is considering launching a “bin collection”-type website for households to track which day they will receive mail, if the company is given the green light by the regulator to water down services.
The company is pushing to cut its services to save costs, and has proposed a reduction in second-class letter deliveries to alternate weekdays.
Industry sources told the Guardian that the company has mooted a new service where customers can input their postcode to discover which days their letter deliveries are due. It would run separately from services dedicated to tracking individual letters or parcels.
Last week, the regulator, Ofcom said second-class letter deliveries in the UK could be scrapped on Saturdays, as it considers reforms to the universal service obligation (USO), the remit held by Royal Mail to deliver nationwide at one price six days a week.
Royal Mail’s owner has proposed reducing deliveries of second-class letters to two or three days a week, cutting nearly 1,000 jobs and saving £300m a year in the process. Ofcom is studying those proposals, and said it would make a decision next year.
A senior industry source said: “The idea is that it would work in the same way as the bin collection site. Anything Royal Mail can do to show that cuts can be done smoothly and the service can be more predictable and reliable could convince Ofcom.”
A dedicated government webpage allows consumers in England and Wales to look up their bin collection days.
The 507-year-old Royal Mail is pushing for postal reforms while its parent company is the subject of a £3.57bn takeover attempt by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. His bid is the subject of a national security review.
Royal Mail delivered less than 80% of first-class post on time in the three months to 30 June. Ofcom is considering reducing its first-class target from 93% of mail delivered by the next working day to 90%, and second-class within three days from 98.5% to 95%, the Sunday Times reported.
Ofcom is investigating Royal Mail for poor service. Last year, it fined the company £5.6m for missing delivery targets.
The industry source added: “Those who rely on the service the most will be those, typically older, people who are not connected to the internet to check when their deliveries are due. Also, if this lists when the post is supposed to be delivered – that’s not a guarantee the delivery will happen given the current state of the service.
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“The fine for failure against delivery targets last year was too small against the financial benefits of stripping out operational costs. Royal Mail must not allowed to reduce the service without improving reliability.”
The company is understood to be in the early stages of devising how postal workers’ delivery routes would be allocated under the alternate-day system.
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “Ahead of any potential reform of the universal service, Royal Mail is exploring a range of options to ensure customers have the information they need about their local postal services.”
From next month, first-class stamps will rise by 30p to £1.65. Second-class will remain at 85p.
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