Second-class post will be delivered every other weekday and scrapped on Saturdays from next month as part of a £500m plan to tackle late deliveries at struggling Royal Mail.
The delivery company has been testing a new letter delivery pattern in a pilot since July, and it will be rolled out nationwide in May.
It comes after agreement with the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and Unite last week that ended a lengthy dispute over the second-class post overhaul. The CWU will now ballot its members on the changes.
There will be no changes to first-class post, which will continue to be delivered daily from Monday to Saturday, and parcels remain unchanged, continuing at up to seven days a week.
The group promised to meet new delivery targets set by the regulator, Ofcom, by next May. It was fined a record £21m by Ofcom last October for missing targets after it delivered just 77% of first-class post and 92.5% of second-class post on time in 2024-25.
Royal Mail said its £500m investment in the service over the next five years included an agreement to allow 6,000 part-time postal workers to increase their average weekly hours if needed. It will be funded by savings made from the changes to the universal service.
The group recently increased its stamp prices, to £1.80 for a first-class stamp and 91p for second class, despite being criticised by Citizens Advice for providing a “failing service”. In February, it blamed stormy weather and high levels of staff sickness after complaints over missed delivery rounds and late letters.
The CWU general secretary, Dave Ward, said: “We welcome any serious proposal that seeks to reverse customer service failings at Royal Mail, but what really matters is what happens on the ground to make that change happen.
“Postal workers … need answers over whether the workforce will be properly resourced and retained, whether they will have a real say over how change is deployed, what manageable workloads look like, and how serious issues are fixed.”
He said Royal Mail’s attitude of “running the company with top-down command and control methods, and prioritising finance over staffing and customer quality must end”. He added that its track record of sticking to its promises was “not great”, prompting the union to ask the government to continue holding the company to account.
Royal Mail expects to improve first-class next-day delivery to about 85% of post within nine months of the changes being brought in, before reaching the 90% target set by Ofcom within a year.
The company also vowed to deliver 93% of second-class letters in three days within nine months, and hit the 95% target by May next year.
Ofcom has lowered the targets for first-class post to be delivered the next day from 93% to 90% and second-class to be delivered within three days from 98.5% to 95%, effective from 1 April. But the regulator added a new “enforceable” backstop delivery target, stipulating that 99% of mail has to be delivered no more than two days late.
The Royal Mail chief executive, Alistair Cochrane, said the plans would lead to a “step change” in performance across the UK, adding: “We recognise our service hasn’t always been the standard our customers rightly expect and we’re determined to do better.”
The shake-up comes a year after the Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group completed a £3.6bn takeover of International Distribution Services, the owner of Royal Mail.
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