Royal Mail issues major update on changes to second-class post plans

Royal Mail's plans to ditch second-class deliveries on Saturdays across the UK will not be rolled out until early next year, the postal service has said. It has been running a pilot across 35 delivery offices to overhaul letter delivery services, including scrapping second-class deliveries on Saturdays and changing the service to every other weekday.

The group were given the green light by regulator Ofcom to start making the reforms from the end of July. But its owner, International Distribution Services, said in its half-year results on Wednesday that it will delay rolling out the new regime more widely until early 2026. IDS chief executive Martin Seidenberg previously described the change as "a massive task" that would "take time" to get right.

Royal Mail was fined £21million by Ofcom last month for missing its annual first and second-class mail delivery targets, leading to millions of letters arriving late across the UK. It marked the third-largest fine ever imposed by the communications watchdog.

Royal Mail delivered 77% of first-class mail and 92.5% of second-class mail on time during the 2024/25 financial year, Ofcom found.

As part of the reforms to the universal postal service, Ofcom has lowered 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%.

However, Ofcom has introduced a new "enforceable" backstop delivery target, requiring that 99% of mail be delivered within two days of the scheduled delivery date.

The latest interim figures showed revenues at Royal Mail lifted 1.5% to £3.98 billion in the six months to September 28, as a 3.2% rise for parcels business offset a 0.4% fall for letters.

Total revenues across the wider IDS group increased 1.6% to £6.45 billion, with the GLS international parcel business seeing revenues rise 1.9% to £2.48 billion.

Royal Mail said the performance was set against a "backdrop of rising costs and macroeconomic pressures which are expected to continue into 2026".

The group said: "These include national insurance contribution increases of around £120 million, increased wage costs in the UK business and complexities in the global trading environment."

It also said that it had hired 20,000 temporary workers ahead of the busy Christmas season, with 7,000 new vans and the opening of four seasonal parcel sorting centres, which provided an additional 118,000 square metres of extra space, equivalent to 16.5 football pitches.

Mr Seidenberg said: "We never underestimate the important role we play at Christmas and we are hiring more people, opening temporary parcel sorting centres and putting more vans on the road to deliver for our customers again this year."

International Distribution Services (IDS) was bought by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky's EP Group last year for £3.6billion.