> Royal Mail’s plan to stop delivering post on Saturdays has been blocked by the government in a blow to the company, which has claimed a six-day service is financially unsustainable.
> The postal company had requested that the government change the universal service obligation (USO) – a condition of its privatisation in 2013.
> However, the business department said it had no plans to adjust the requirement to deliver on Saturday as well as the five weekdays, in a response to a report by MPs on the business select committee. MPs would have to vote through any changes to the obligation.
> Kevin Hollinrake, a minister at the Department for Business and Trade, wrote: “We currently have no plans to change the minimum requirements of the universal postal service as set out in the Postal Services Act 2011 … including six-day letter deliveries.”
> Royal Mail has been lobbying the government to have the obligation removed as it struggles to return to profitability after an annual loss of £1bn driven by postal worker strikes as well as the longer-run drop in profitability of letter deliveries.
> The regulator Ofcom has said the move could save the company up to £225m a year, and carried out polling that suggested most people in the UK were indifferent about the prospect of no weekend letter deliveries.
> However, Ofcom is currently investigating Royal Mail for poor performance against the obligation. Royal Mail is required to deliver 93% of first class mail within one working day of collection and 98.5% of second class mail within three working days, but it achieved only 74% and 91% respectively over the past year.
> The company was hoping that the move to weekday-only deliveries would help it in its broader ambition to shift away from letters – which are increasingly replaced by email and other electronic messages – to parcels, which have boomed thanks to the growth of online retailing.
> Yet Royal Mail has struggled to get beyond disputes with unions over its future strategy. The former chief executive Simon Thompson left in May after two years in which relations with workers soured. He had announced 10,000 job cuts in October in reaction to the disruption from strikes and a decline in its parcels business.
> The company has not announced a replacement chief executive, though it has agreed a deal with the Communication Workers Union that could bring an end to the turmoil. That deal would need to be passed by members, but the union has suspended its ballot, adding to uncertainty for the company.
> A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “The government has said before that it has no current plans to change the USO, but it is clear that when letter volumes have declined by more than 60% since their peak in 2004-05, in order to be financially sustainable, the [USO] requires urgent reform.”
> Continuing Saturday deliveries “increases the threat to the sustainability of the universal service”, the spokesperson said. “We urge the government to recognise Ofcom’s findings, to enable this change quickly, and work with us to protect the long-term sustainability of the one-price-goes-anywhere universal service.”
>Established in 1516 as a public service
>Survives 500 years of public ownership
>Sold off between 2011-2015
>Now needs to make cuts to availability because “muh financial sustainability”
Hilarious
They want to focus on parcels because that is where all the money is these days, except they do not have the staff and resources to do that on top of Saturday deliveries. Royal Mail are not a great company to work for, from what I have heard at least, so the only way to get into the parcel game is to cut services elsewhere.
As customer I would prefer them to not do deliveries on Saturday
Also people need a break
Financially unsustainable?
They pay dividends out, while not being able to continue meeting their liabilities? Pretty sure that’s a criminal offence.
Renationalize the entire company at a cost of zero, including the profitable parcel section, on the basis that they themselves have valued the company at a negative value.
It’s sadly a 70s workforce run by a Thatcherite management. It’s going to pull itself apart.
Saturday deliveries, yes clearly a must in 2023 🤣 what’s the point of an apparent service if it’s non existent when I’m at work.
And the plebs yearning for public ownership, it was crap back then too. I yearn for the days of having to quickly getting to a distribution centre on a Saturday with tiny time slot (as no one wanted to work it but that was ok) to pickup a parcel it’s staff refuse to post to my neighbours and when you get to the distribution centre the one rude member of staff took forever and we disappear for stupid amounts of time. Under public ownership it was the pits. Healthcare , police, education, fire service who wouldn’t want good publicity funded services like this get worse as we funded big Dave picking his arse while he slowly gets paid over the odds for service that is frigging useless for the majority of people in a modern society.
Probably a matter of time. A bigger issue at the moment is the failure to meet even basic service levels because of unmanageable workloads and the prioritisation of parcels. An issue which was raised, and revisited, by the Parliamentary committee, yet remains an issue.
*also have to say this article is kinda fucking biased, repeating the company line. Fucking guardian
It’s mad to privatise a company, but then saddle it with such requirements that it doesn’t have a hope in hell of competing with the many alternative parcel carriers and their cut-price “freelance delivery agents”.
Our postman currently delivers maybe 2 or 3 days a week. If moving to 5 days rather than an alleged 6 means he actually turns up for those 5, then I’ll take that.
The same push is happening in America and so far hasn’t succeeded. The same copy paste comment should have been our fucking copy paste comment.
It doesn’t lose money, it’s a public service. No one says the army loses money.
Create a rival that is nationally owned called British Mail and slowly eat all their business until the shareholders are left with nothing.
I dunno why not. I’d be perfectly happy with every other day Mail. Businesses probably need every day, and perhaps special delivery could be daily, but for the vast majority of things it’s simply not important enough. It would save them a huge amount of money.
Letter delivery is a dying business. I get about 3 items a week and they are either bills or from companies. If I could be bothered, I would get them switched to paperless. Either postal costs rise or the government relents and let’s them cut sosts to remain viable.
It was part of the privatisation deal… so, um. No.
We’ll take it back if you’re so worried about losing money though.
Time we get the mail on a Saturday be as well leaving it till Monday
Good, they took on the obligation, and now they want to put profit before those obligations.
The people working these these important jobs are just being taken advantage of. My postie told me he hates to take time off because he has to deliver twice as much the next day. I’m not sure how it works but that’s what he’s told me. I know a bus driver of 20 years who makes less than my girlfriend at Starbucks. It’s just gross
Why? The Royal Mail are a 24-7 company. What difference would dropping Saturday deliveries do for them when they are still doing Sunday pickups?
Remember when you used to have second post? Now they can’t even manage once a day. The efficiencies of privatisation.
Wait
I agree with the government on something!?
Shit, pretty sure this is a sign of the apocalypse.
21 comments
> Royal Mail’s plan to stop delivering post on Saturdays has been blocked by the government in a blow to the company, which has claimed a six-day service is financially unsustainable.
> The postal company had requested that the government change the universal service obligation (USO) – a condition of its privatisation in 2013.
> However, the business department said it had no plans to adjust the requirement to deliver on Saturday as well as the five weekdays, in a response to a report by MPs on the business select committee. MPs would have to vote through any changes to the obligation.
> Kevin Hollinrake, a minister at the Department for Business and Trade, wrote: “We currently have no plans to change the minimum requirements of the universal postal service as set out in the Postal Services Act 2011 … including six-day letter deliveries.”
> Royal Mail has been lobbying the government to have the obligation removed as it struggles to return to profitability after an annual loss of £1bn driven by postal worker strikes as well as the longer-run drop in profitability of letter deliveries.
> The regulator Ofcom has said the move could save the company up to £225m a year, and carried out polling that suggested most people in the UK were indifferent about the prospect of no weekend letter deliveries.
> However, Ofcom is currently investigating Royal Mail for poor performance against the obligation. Royal Mail is required to deliver 93% of first class mail within one working day of collection and 98.5% of second class mail within three working days, but it achieved only 74% and 91% respectively over the past year.
> The company was hoping that the move to weekday-only deliveries would help it in its broader ambition to shift away from letters – which are increasingly replaced by email and other electronic messages – to parcels, which have boomed thanks to the growth of online retailing.
> Yet Royal Mail has struggled to get beyond disputes with unions over its future strategy. The former chief executive Simon Thompson left in May after two years in which relations with workers soured. He had announced 10,000 job cuts in October in reaction to the disruption from strikes and a decline in its parcels business.
> The company has not announced a replacement chief executive, though it has agreed a deal with the Communication Workers Union that could bring an end to the turmoil. That deal would need to be passed by members, but the union has suspended its ballot, adding to uncertainty for the company.
> A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “The government has said before that it has no current plans to change the USO, but it is clear that when letter volumes have declined by more than 60% since their peak in 2004-05, in order to be financially sustainable, the [USO] requires urgent reform.”
> Continuing Saturday deliveries “increases the threat to the sustainability of the universal service”, the spokesperson said. “We urge the government to recognise Ofcom’s findings, to enable this change quickly, and work with us to protect the long-term sustainability of the one-price-goes-anywhere universal service.”
>Established in 1516 as a public service
>Survives 500 years of public ownership
>Sold off between 2011-2015
>Now needs to make cuts to availability because “muh financial sustainability”
Hilarious
They want to focus on parcels because that is where all the money is these days, except they do not have the staff and resources to do that on top of Saturday deliveries. Royal Mail are not a great company to work for, from what I have heard at least, so the only way to get into the parcel game is to cut services elsewhere.
As customer I would prefer them to not do deliveries on Saturday
Also people need a break
Financially unsustainable?
They pay dividends out, while not being able to continue meeting their liabilities? Pretty sure that’s a criminal offence.
Renationalize the entire company at a cost of zero, including the profitable parcel section, on the basis that they themselves have valued the company at a negative value.
It’s sadly a 70s workforce run by a Thatcherite management. It’s going to pull itself apart.
Saturday deliveries, yes clearly a must in 2023 🤣 what’s the point of an apparent service if it’s non existent when I’m at work.
And the plebs yearning for public ownership, it was crap back then too. I yearn for the days of having to quickly getting to a distribution centre on a Saturday with tiny time slot (as no one wanted to work it but that was ok) to pickup a parcel it’s staff refuse to post to my neighbours and when you get to the distribution centre the one rude member of staff took forever and we disappear for stupid amounts of time. Under public ownership it was the pits. Healthcare , police, education, fire service who wouldn’t want good publicity funded services like this get worse as we funded big Dave picking his arse while he slowly gets paid over the odds for service that is frigging useless for the majority of people in a modern society.
Probably a matter of time. A bigger issue at the moment is the failure to meet even basic service levels because of unmanageable workloads and the prioritisation of parcels. An issue which was raised, and revisited, by the Parliamentary committee, yet remains an issue.
*also have to say this article is kinda fucking biased, repeating the company line. Fucking guardian
It’s mad to privatise a company, but then saddle it with such requirements that it doesn’t have a hope in hell of competing with the many alternative parcel carriers and their cut-price “freelance delivery agents”.
Our postman currently delivers maybe 2 or 3 days a week. If moving to 5 days rather than an alleged 6 means he actually turns up for those 5, then I’ll take that.
The same push is happening in America and so far hasn’t succeeded. The same copy paste comment should have been our fucking copy paste comment.
It doesn’t lose money, it’s a public service. No one says the army loses money.
Create a rival that is nationally owned called British Mail and slowly eat all their business until the shareholders are left with nothing.
I dunno why not. I’d be perfectly happy with every other day Mail. Businesses probably need every day, and perhaps special delivery could be daily, but for the vast majority of things it’s simply not important enough. It would save them a huge amount of money.
Letter delivery is a dying business. I get about 3 items a week and they are either bills or from companies. If I could be bothered, I would get them switched to paperless. Either postal costs rise or the government relents and let’s them cut sosts to remain viable.
It was part of the privatisation deal… so, um. No.
We’ll take it back if you’re so worried about losing money though.
Time we get the mail on a Saturday be as well leaving it till Monday
Good, they took on the obligation, and now they want to put profit before those obligations.
The people working these these important jobs are just being taken advantage of. My postie told me he hates to take time off because he has to deliver twice as much the next day. I’m not sure how it works but that’s what he’s told me. I know a bus driver of 20 years who makes less than my girlfriend at Starbucks. It’s just gross
Why? The Royal Mail are a 24-7 company. What difference would dropping Saturday deliveries do for them when they are still doing Sunday pickups?
Remember when you used to have second post? Now they can’t even manage once a day. The efficiencies of privatisation.
Wait
I agree with the government on something!?
Shit, pretty sure this is a sign of the apocalypse.