Most likely due to the Ofcom investigation into RM performance for 2021-2022 which concluded today:
TL;DR - No more blaming Covid.
Under Ofcom rules 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 of collection.
However, across 2021-22, only 81.8% of First Class mail was delivered within one working day and 95.4% of Second Class mail was delivered within three working days.
In addition, Royal Mail is set a target of completing 99.9% of delivery routes on each day that a delivery is required. However, it completed 94.09% of routes over this period.
Royal Mail is also required to deliver 91.5% of First Class stamped and metered mail products within one working day in 118 postcode areas of the UK – but it didn’t meet this target in any of these postcode areas.
Performance against these targets is measured as an average performance level throughout the year, excluding the Christmas period.
Ofcom takes quality of service very seriously. In our investigation we will gather evidence to understand the reasons behind this lapse in performance, and will determine whether Royal Mail has breached its requirements.
3.2
While the challenges of Covid-19 were once unpredictable and unexpected, they have
now, for the most part, fallen away. Social distancing measures are no longer in place,
Royal Mail’s traffic mix appears to have largely returned to pre-pandemic trends, 24 and the
impact of Covid-19 on absence levels is likely to be much less unpredictable, allowing for
contingency planning. As such, we do not expect Covid-19 to have a continuing significant
impact on Royal Mail’s QoS in the way it has done in 2021-22.
Assessing future compliance
3.3
When assessing Royal Mail’s compliance with its QoS obligations in future years, Ofcom
will take the specific circumstances of any failure into account. However, in light of the
above, we do not anticipate that we will treat the impacts of Covid-19 on Royal Mail’s
performance in the same way we have this year.
3.4
Given that we do not expect to see Covid-19 having such a pervasive impact in future
years, we also do not intend to treat Covid-19 as a single event in the future. We will assess
any future impacts of Covid-19 as individual factors that impacted Royal Mail’s QoS and
will consider whether they are exceptional in the context of that reporting period. We have
now considered the impacts of Covid-19 on Royal Mail’s QoS over two years and believe
that Royal Mail has had time to learn lessons from the pandemic. As such, the factors
outlined above are unlikely to be considered exceptional in future.
3.5
As stated in our 2022 review of postal regulation, the QoS regime helps to ensure that
users benefit from certainty that an item will arrive on the date promised, with high
reliability. We know from our 2020 user needs research that users value these qualities of
the universal service above speed of delivery.
