Nearly 11 million people hit by post delays over Christmas, says Citizens Advice

'For acold excessively long, missive delays and mediocre work person go concern arsenic accustomed astatine Royal Mail'

Nearly 11 cardinal radical experienced delays with their missive station implicit the Christmas period, according to citizens advice.

Not lone were Christmas cards late, but astir 3.4 cardinal UK adults besides faced superior repercussions, including missed important wellness appointments, bills, ineligible documents, slope letters, fines and payment decisions.

The South East was the portion astir affected by missive delays successful the past month, with 27% of radical not receiving their station connected time. Under the Universal Service Obligation (USO), Royal Mail is legally required to present letters six days a week, though it is exempt from transportation targets during the Christmas period.

However, speech from this, Royal Mail has not met its yearly first- and second-class transportation targets since 2019. The past clip Royal Mail achieved a first-class transportation people was successful the 2nd 4th of 2019, and a second-class transportation people was past met successful the 4th fourth of that year.

Regulator Ofcom is expected to denote projected changes to the USO successful the coming weeks, which could spot second-class missive deliveries reduced to alternate weekdays lone and could let Royal Mail to importantly summation charges. Citizens Advice, the statutory watchdog for postal consumers, is urging Ofcom to betterment the USO successful a mode that protects consumers from steep terms hikes and ongoing delays.

Consumers are presently forking retired much than treble what they did 5 years agone for a first-class stamp portion grappling with subpar work standards from Royal Mail, Citizens Advice has claimed. It was revealed that astir a 3rd (29%) of those who usage Royal Mail to nonstop and person letters admitted to cutting backmost connected sending Christmas cards successful 2024 owed to costly stamps, according to a survey commissioned by the charity.

Tom MacInnes, the manager of argumentation astatine Citizens Advice, said: "For acold excessively long, missive delays and mediocre work person go concern arsenic accustomed astatine Royal Mail.

"Letter delays aren’t conscionable astir missed Christmas cards. Millions of radical receiving their station late, oregon not astatine all, tin acquisition existent and worrying consequences – particularly erstwhile they miss captious aesculapian appointments oregon bills.

"With the aboriginal of our postal work astatine stake, reforms to the USO travel astatine a captious time. Improving reliability and affordability volition beryllium essential. But cutting deliveries won’t automatically pb to the much reliable work radical request – nor should they beryllium expected to wage much for a reduced service."

He urged regulators to absorption connected consumers: "Ofcom has to guarantee immoderate revised USO puts user needs astatine its bosom – not conscionable Royal Mail’s bottommost line."

In response, an Ofcom spokesperson assured that user interests were paramount: "Consumers are astatine the bosom of our review. We’ve been speaking straight to postal users to recognize however the cosmopolitan work could germinate to bespeak what they request from it.

"If we bash nothing, the work risks becoming unsustainable, and radical could extremity up paying higher prices than necessary. Whatever the outcome, we are perfectly wide that Royal Mail indispensable put successful its network, go much businesslike and amended its work levels."

A Royal Mail spokesperson said: "99% of each items posted by the past recommended posting dates were delivered successful clip for Christmas. This is contempt 3 terrible storms that impacted immoderate deliveries, creating challenges that could lone beryllium flooded done the hard enactment of our colleagues.

"While we judge much enactment is needed, our efforts are yielding results with deliveries improving twelvemonth connected year."

– Yonder conducted a survey of 2,079 UK adults betwixt January 3 and 5.