Related Articles
Royal Mail has failed to meet its annual first and second class delivery targets since 2019, and was fined £21million in October for breaching its universal service obligation.
Even accounting for exceptional weather events, Royal Mail only delivered 77% of First Class mail on time and 92.5% of Second Class mail on time between April 2024 and March 2025.
Read More:
As previously reported by The Herald, staff have alleged that the service prioritises tracked deliveries over first and second class mail.
The company denies this, stating that it has “contingency plans” which may lead to parcels being cleared first at busy periods due to them taking up more space.
The Business and Trade Committee group of MPs has now written to Royal Mail’s interim CEO, Alistair Cochrane, asking for concerns to be addressed with a response expected by March 2.
The letter states: “You will be well aware of the recent failures in service that have been reported to the press and to Members of Parliament. In recent days, the Royal Mail website has listed well over 100 postcodes across the UK at risk of service disruption due to ‘local issues such as high levels of sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors’.
“This chaos has continued into mid-February, well beyond the predictable pressures of the Christmas period.
“Alongside this, concerns have been repeatedly raised that Royal Mail appears to be prioritising parcels over letters. This Committee’s predecessor concluded as much in a report published in March 2023.
“I am aware of a statement issued by Royal Mail which claims that, beyond ‘recognised contingency plans’ to prevent unsafe build-ups of parcels in delivery offices, Ofcom has investigated and found no evidence to support these allegations. I would like to seek your categorical assurance on this point.
“There have also been suggestions that in some cases Royal Mail deliberately chooses not to deliver letters until a ‘batch’ of mail is ready to be delivered to that address. This alleged practice of ‘batching’ letters, if true, clearly risks customers missing important time-sensitive information such as medical appointments, as well as impacting upon Royal Mail’s delivery performance.”
Royal Mail has been asked to respond to a number of questions by March 2.
The first its performance against Ofcom’s new backstop target of 99% of mail being delivered no more than two days late.
Royal Mail has then been asked to “categorically assure” that it does not operate a general priority of prioritising parcels over letters.
It has been asked to clarify matters around the deprioritising of letters, how it compares to previous years and how it tracks the impact of this on its mail delivery targets.
Royal Mail has been asked when it intends to publish an ‘urgent’ improvement plan called for by Ofcom, and what financial provision it has made for future fines with regard to missed targets.
In an investigation by The Herald last year, every postal worker spoken to said they had been told to prioritise tracked items.
Royal Mail made a loss of £8m for 2025, an improvement on the £348m the previous year.
The holding company, International Distribution Services, which is owned by Mr Křetínský’s EP Group made an operating profit of £278m which all came from its international parcels division, General Logistics Systems, with Royal Mail also including Parcelforce in the UK.
GLS saw operating income fall from £328m in 2024 but revenues improved 1.3% to £4.9bn.
Before paying any dividends, Royal Mail must have a net leverage ratio (i.e debt to earnings ratio) of 2:1 or less and any such payouts could not be made unless it can ‘reasonably be expected’ there would be no ‘material adverse effect’ on its universal service obligation.
Under the terms of Mr Křetínský’s takeover, GLS cannot be sold or spun off from Royal Mail for a period of three years from April 2025.
