Royal Mail has been fined £21m for failing to meet delivery targets for the third year in a row and warned fines are likely to continue unless there’s an improvement. As well as failing to meet current delivery times for both first and second class mail, Royal Mail did not meet revised down targets agreed with Ofcom.
The delivery network delivered 77% of first class mail and 92.5% of second class mail on time from April 2024 to March this year, «well short» of its 93% and 98.5% targets, the communications regulator said. It’s also below the reduced goals which were set out for the delivery company at the start of the year – bringing down the percentage of first class post delivered the next day from 93% to 90%, and second class mail delivered within three days from 98.5% to 95%. The latest fine is double that levied last year, £10.5m, and nearly quadruple the £5.6m fine in 2023 because of the repeat offending.
It’s the third-largest fine ever levied by Ofcom and would have been higher, £30m, but for Royal Mail’s admission of wrongdoing and agreement to settle. Millions not getting what they pay for Ian Strawhorne, director of enforcement at Ofcom, said: «Millions of important letters are arriving late, and people aren’t getting what they pay for when they buy a stamp. Royal Mail has, without justification, failed to provide an acceptable level of service and breached its obligations, Ofcom added. «It took insufficient and ineffective steps to try and prevent this failure, which is likely to have impacted millions of customers who did not get the service they paid for.»
What next? Royal Mail has been ordered to publicly set out how it’s going to change by Ofcom, which expects to see «meaningful progress soon», rather than «more empty promises». Improvements Ofcom pressed for have not materialized and it’s been called on to make «actual significant improvements». «If this doesn’t happen, fines are likely to continue.» The regulator said the «persistent failures» are unacceptable, and customers expect and deserve better. «Royal Mail must rebuild consumers’ confidence as a matter of urgency,» it added.
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