Royal Mail says service is improving after Ofcom postal fine
Late letters are still disrupting appointments, fines and legal notices as Royal Mail says service is improving after a £21 million Ofcom penalty. The watchdog now wants faster reform.
For households waiting on hospital appointments, benefit decisions, legal papers and bills, a late first-class letter is not a minor inconvenience. It can mean a missed clinic slot, a penalty notice that arrives too late, or a business invoice that stalls cash flow across the United Kingdom.
Royal Mail says its service is improving and that it is on track to meet Ofcom’s reduced targets, but the numbers behind the dispute show how far the network has to go. Ofcom fined the company £21 million on 15 October 2025 after finding that Royal Mail delivered only 77% of first-class letters within one working day in 2024/25, well short of the 93% target. Second-class performance was also below target, with 92.5% delivered within three working days against a required 98.5%.
The regulator opened its investigation into Royal Mail’s 2024/25 performance on 23 May 2025. It also said the company is exempt from delivery targets during the Christmas period, which runs from the first Monday in December until the New Year public holiday.
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Ofcom’s July 10, 2025 reform package changed the universal service so that second-class letters can be delivered on alternate weekdays rather than Saturdays, while first-class mail remains a six-days-a-week service. Royal Mail says its own delivery changes will mean second-class and other non-first-class letters are delivered every other weekday, with second-class mail aimed within three weekdays. Ofcom has also said it will review stamp affordability as letter volumes fall and parcel traffic grows.
The policy fight has widened beyond service complaints. On 22 May 2026, the Commons Business and Trade Committee said Ofcom had failed to drive improvements fast enough and may not be up to regulating a more complex postal market. Ofcom replied that Royal Mail’s current performance was not acceptable and that it expected the company to deliver against its improvement plan.
Citizens Advice has been one of the sharpest critics, saying consumers are “fed up” with Royal Mail’s performance and that people are still paying for a service that fails to deliver on time. The consumer group has warned that delayed post can lead to missed health appointments, fines, benefit decisions and legal documents landing too late to act on.
Royal Mail argues that the universal service obligation needs reform because the old model is not financially sustainable. With Ofcom now setting backstop targets and Parliament questioning whether the regulator is moving fast enough, postal reliability has become a test of whether a basic public service is being repaired or simply redefined downward.
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