Delivering postal users' needs in a digital age Add to Your Pages
26 November 2020
Royal Mail needs to become more efficient and modernise its parcel network
New Ofcom research shines a light on changing attitudes to postal services
Reducing letter deliveries to five days a week would still meet the needs of nearly all people and businesses
But changing delivery requirements alone would not sustain the universal service in the long term
Ofcom is calling on Royal Mail to modernise its network and become more efficient, in order to sustain the universal service and keep pace with postal users' changing needs.
The postal market has changed dramatically in recent years. The number of letters people send and receive has fallen by around 5% each year since 2015, as people increasingly rely on email and other online communications.
Growth in online shopping has seen overall parcel volumes increase at a rate of around 10% per year since 2015. And these trends seem to have accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, with Royal Mail reporting a 31% increase in its UK parcel volumes between April and September this year.
While the pandemic has made 2020 a particularly challenging year for Royal Mail, the issues facing the company due to the changing market and consumer behaviour were apparent before the pandemic started to have an impact.
Parcel delivery: Royal Mail must modernise and become more efficientOfcom's annual monitoring report on the postal market sets out data and trends within the postal sector, and examines Royal Mail's performance. In 2019/20, 2.8 billion parcels were sent and received in the UK one billion more than in 2013 in a market now worth over £10bn in revenues.
Our analysis of Royal Mail's efficiency shows that costs in the part of the business responsible for the universal service increased last year. The company failed to make efficiency gains or meet the targets it set itself for improving productivity.
Unless Royal Mail can modernise its network to adapt to parcel customers' changing needs, and operate more efficiently, the sustainability of the universal service could be at risk in the longer term.
Letter delivery: does the universal service reflect users' needs?Under legislation, the universal postal service requires Royal Mail to deliver letters six days a week (Monday to Saturday) and parcels five days a week (Monday to Friday) to every address in the UK, at a uniform price.
With the market continuing to change rapidly, Ofcom has carried out a comprehensive review of the needs of postal users across the UK, to see if the delivery requirements Royal Mail has to meet still reflect what people and businesses need today.[1]
We have asked people and businesses how they feel about a range of hypothetical changes to the universal service, to find out what would meet their needs. Any changes to the universal service's minimum requirements could only be made by Government and Parliament, but the findings give an insight into how people's attitudes to postal services have evolved.[2]
Our research found that the current six-day-a-week letter delivery requirement meets the needs of 98% of residential users and 97% of small and medium businesses (SMEs) in the UK. Reducing this to five days a week, but leaving all other elements of the service unchanged, would still meet the needs of 97% of residential and SME users.[3]
This suggests that reducing the letter deliveries requirement to five days a week would reflect postal users' reasonable needs. It would potentially allow Royal Mail to make net cost savings of around £125-225m per year.
However, Royal Mail continues to face significant financial challenges and this saving alone would not be sufficient in itself to ensure the longer-term sustainability of the universal service.
Lindsey Fussell, Ofcom's Networks and Communications Group Director, said: Our research suggests that people's needs would still be met if letter deliveries were reduced from six days a week to five.
It would ultimately be for Parliament to decide whether this change is needed. However, Royal Mail must still modernise and become more efficient, to keep pace with customers' changing needs.
Next stepsWe have researched whether the minimum requirements of the universal service reflect the reasonable needs of postal users. It would be for the UK Government to determine whether any changes are needed to these minimum requirements and to bring any proposals before Parliament.
Separately, we are reviewing the future regulatory framework for post. This will consider issues affecting the broader postal sector, as people's reliance on parcels continues to grow. For example, we will look at continuing the requirements for Royal Mail to provide wholesale access to its network, and whether extra consumer protections are required in the parcels market. We will consult on these issues next year and conclude this review in 2022.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Nationally representative samples of 4,596 UK adults and 971 businesses were surveyed at the end of 2019. This was supplemented by discussion groups across the UK. We subsequently surveyed 2,366 adults in summer 2020 to assess how far users' views may have changed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our review has focused on the minimum requirements of the universal service, but we also asked for people's views on hypothetical changes to other features. We carried out our last review of postal users' needs in 2012/13.
The Postal Services Act 2011 sets out the minimum requirements of the universal postal service and the need for the provision of that service to be financially sustainable and efficient. Ofcom can specify other features of the universal service, such as requiring the choice of a first-class and second-class serv
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
26/11/2025
A cinematic snow sculpture at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Randall Michelson...
26/11/2025
Book podcasts are booming. On Spotify, you'll find everything from celebrity book clubs to deep dives with bestselling authors. And in markets where audiobo...
26/11/2025
Mumbai, November 24, 2025: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, JioStar, in collab...
26/11/2025
LONDON Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins....
26/11/2025
MIAMI TelevisaUnivision said it struck a new multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV that includes distribution of TelevisaUnivision's U.S. network...
26/11/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leader in software-defined data storage and data services, today announced the launch of the Atlas Corporate Creative Solution. This new Atl...
26/11/2025
Disguise, the industry-leading company powering the world's biggest live performances, is partnering with pioneering LED wall manufacturer DVS to give atten...
26/11/2025
HighField AI, the pioneer in agentic and multimodal automation for broadcast and media production, today announced the expansion of its global channel partner n...
26/11/2025
As high-stakes Premier League fixtures approach and additional premium content launches, with MONO positioning themselves to dominate Thailand's sports stre...
26/11/2025
Hosting a wide variety of events from high-intensity NHL games to complex live music concerts and major entertainment productions, Montreal's 21,000 capacit...
26/11/2025
Vizrt, the leader in live production technology revolutionizing viewer engagement and experience, releases AI-driven advances focusing on speed, intelligence, a...
26/11/2025
ITN Productions, an award-winning factual content producer, today launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins. Responsible for delivering a leading...
26/11/2025
Ikegami reports ongoing advances throughout 2025 in developing and delivering coordinated television production solutions that maximize quality, versatility and...
26/11/2025
Following the Nov. 21 blackout of NBCUniversal channels on Fubo, the two sides have traded barbs about their inability to reach a new carriage deal....
26/11/2025
LONDON As TV sports rights become increasingly important for both broadcasters and streamers, Ampere Analysis predicts global investment in the genre will surpa...
26/11/2025
LOS ANGELES Vubiquity said it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Media & Entertainment Competency as part of the AWS Partner Network (APN). This designa...
26/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau said it has entered into a consent decree with Comcast calling for the cable company t...
26/11/2025
Berklee Named to the Hollywood Reporters Top Music Schools List The publication highlights the college's screen scoring program, industry partnerships, and ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
Animated Series Love Through a Prism' Casts New Light on ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
NALIP Unveils Fifth Cohort of Director Incubator
Social Impact
26 November 2025
United States
Link copied to clipboard
The National Assoc...
26/11/2025
YouView Achieves Greenly Gold Certification for SustainabilityNov 26, 2025
YouView is proud to announce a Gold Certification award from Greenly for our perform...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Deepens Partnership with Taiwan's 62nd Golden Hors...
25/11/2025
Tracy Bonareri Onchoke, an investigative journalist from Kenya is the winner of the Thomson Foundation's Young Journalist Award 2025.
The 26-year-old-sele...
25/11/2025
SVG All-Stars: Blayke Scheer, Senior Director, Creative Content, YES NetworkThe Indiana alum has turned storytelling into an artform for more than two decadesBy...
25/11/2025
Op-Ed: With FCC's C-Band Auction on the Horizon, Broadcasters Need Proven, C...
25/11/2025
Analysis: Is Baller League really the future of sport? By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, November 25, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
With KSI on...
25/11/2025
Platinum Whitepaper: The Growth of Broadcast in the World of Major Large Scale E...
25/11/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: SVG Women's Sports WorkshopBy Samantha Gabay
Tuesday, November 25, 2025 - 10:27 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlig...
25/11/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: CacheFly's Matt Levine on the Evolving Role of th...
25/11/2025
Peacock's EA SPORTS Madden NFL Cast Levels Up on Thanksgiving With SkyCam as...
25/11/2025
Mathias Broe attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Sauna at Library Center Theatre. (Photo by Michael Hurcomb/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Fes...
25/11/2025
The best playlists, podcasts, and audiobooks bring a little extra magic to your daily routine. With new features and offerings, Spotify Premium delivers even mo...
25/11/2025
Comprehensive new research confirms what we already knew: Australian music fans love the quality, quantity, and access they have to new and local music on strea...
25/11/2025
Applicable Products
Objectives The purpose of this application note is to give a brief background on 5G (NR) wireless communication an explain the reason a SN...
25/11/2025
Nielsen will now measure both Lionsgate's FAST channel MovieSphere and Movie...
25/11/2025
FREMONT, Calif. Blackmagic Design said the Associated Press has completed the transition of its global video-editing platform to DaVinci Resolve Studio....
Delivering postal users' needs in a digital age Add to Your Pages 
