Citizens Advice responds to Royal Mail's Q1 quality of service results for 2025-26

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about ... sults-for/

22 August 2025

Responding to Royal Mail's latest quality of service results, which show Royal Mail did not met its delivery targets for First or Second class post between April and June 2025,

Tom MacInnes, Director of Policy at Citizens Advice, said:

“It’s no surprise that paying consumers are still being let down by our country’s postal service. For more than half a decade, late deliveries have disrupted lives - causing people to miss medical appointments and benefit decisions - while stamp prices soared.

“Yet, Ofcom has responded by lowering Royal Mail’s delivery targets and slashing its second class delivery requirements in half. These changes don’t guarantee a more reliable or affordable service, but risk making things worse for consumers.

“Ofcom must ensure reduced deliveries are balanced with targets Royal Mail genuinely has to hit so people finally get the service they deserve.” -ends-

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Notes to editors:

Royal Mail’s latest Quality of Service results refer to Q1 (April-June) of the 25-26 financial year. Under the Universal Service Obligation (USO), the regulator Ofcom requires Royal Mail to deliver, in each financial year, 93% of First Class mail within one working day of collection, and 98.5% of Second Class mail within three working days of collection.

In July this year, Ofcom announced changes to the USO. As of July 28th, 2025, Royal Mail only needs to deliver Second Class mail on alternate weekdays, instead of six-days-a-week, Monday to Saturday.

Ofcom lowered Royal Mail’s headline delivery targets as part of the changes to the USO, which mean that from April 1st, 2026, Royal Mail will be required to deliver 90% of First Class Mail within one working day (instead of 93%), and 95% of Second Class mail within three days (instead of 98.5%).

Tail of the mail targets have been introduced and will also come into effect on April 1st, 2026. These are targets for the delivery of items which have not met headline targets. For First Class mail, 99% will have to be delivered within three days, and for Second Class mail, 99% will have to be delivered within five working days.

Citizens Advice is made up of the national charity Citizens Advice; the network of independent local Citizens Advice charities across England and Wales; the Citizens Advice consumer service; and the Witness Service.

Our network of charities offers impartial advice online, over the phone, and in person, for free.

Citizens Advice helped 2.68 million people face to face, over the phone, by email and webchat in 2023-24. And we had 51.7 million visits to our website. For full service statistics see our monthly publication Advice trends.

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Citizens Advice is the statutory consumer advocate for energy and postal markets. We provide supplier performance information to consumers and policy analysis to decision makers.

You can get consumer advice from the Citizens Advice consumer service on 0808 223 1133 or 0808 223 1144 for Welsh language speakers.

[BenacreNick]

Tom, I'm sure everyone is working really hard to meet those targets.