Royal Mail has fallen short of its delivery targets once again, though the postal operator maintains it is making headway as it implements a major restructuring that includes ending Saturday second-class mail.
During the first quarter of the year, the company delivered 85 per cent of first-class mail the next day and 91.4 per cent of second-class items within three working days.
Regulator Ofcom sets requirements for 90 per cent of first-class post to arrive on the following day, while 95 per cent of second-class letters should be delivered inside three days.
On 1 April, the watchdog reduced the previous targets of 93 per cent for first-class and 98.5 per cent for second-class as part of universal service reforms.
However, Royal Mail emphasised a clear improvement compared to the same period a year earlier, when first-quarter figures stood at just 76 per cent for first-class and 89.3 per cent for second-class deliveries.
The group — whose parent company International Distribution Services was acquired last year by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky — recently committed to satisfying Ofcom’s targets by May 2027 under a five-year, £500 million investment plan.
Last July, Ofcom gave postal reforms the green light to reflect steep declines in the number of letters being sent, allowing second-class letters to be delivered on alternate weekdays only.
Royal Mail expects to complete the rollout of the new model across all its 1,200 delivery offices by Christmas, after initially being delayed until it had reached agreement with trade unions.
Jamie Stephenson, Royal Mail chief operating officer, said: “These results are encouraging and show that the work we are doing to improve the service is having an impact.
“First-class performance is well ahead of where we expected to be at this stage of our improvement plan, while second-class is tracking in line with the plan.”
But he said “we know there is more to do”.
Ofcom launched an investigation in June into Royal Mail’s failure to meet its delivery targets for the second year running in the 12 months to the end of March.
It was fined a record £21 million by Ofcom in October last year for missing targets in 2024-25.
While the regulator lowered Royal Mail’s targets in April, it added a new “enforceable” backstop delivery target, so that 99% of mail has to be delivered no more than two days late.
Royal Mail said it also missed this backstop, but closed the gap, with 98.1% of first-class post delivered within three days and 98.4% of second-class within five days.
The group’s full-year figures in June showed Royal Mail’s operating profits more than halved to £96 million after labour costs soared following minimum wage hikes and an extra £133 million employee tax bill.
The results showed Royal Mail’s parcel volumes rose 7% to 1.4 billion over the year, but addressed letter volumes fell 10% to 5.7 billion.