UK Royal Mail considering 1 key change to deliveries as EU's postal services fall apart

[POSTMAN]

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/20437 ... key-change

The Royal Mail may be about to change how it delivers letters as postal services across Europe shut down.

Traditional postal services across Europe are being gutted as household demand for physical mail has fallen, with the UK one of the few countries still committed to a six-day-a-week First-Class service. Denmark’s PostNord announced in March that it would end all letter deliveries by the end of 2025, pointing to a 90% drop-off in demand since the start of the century. In the same month, Germany’s Deutsche Post announced that it was axing 8000 jobs.

Meanwhile, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden have all stripped back their postal services since 2014. The Royal Mail remains one of the last postal services in Europe committed to six-day-a-week First-Class letter deliveries. However, even in the UK, Ofcom, which regulates Royal Mail, is considering permitting the postal service to make Second-Class letters every other weekday instead of six days a week.

"The world has changed, we're sending a third of the letters we were 20 years ago," Natalie Black, Ofcom's group director for networks and communications, said in January.

"We need to reform the postal service to protect its future and ensure it delivers for the whole of the UK."

Despite its proposals, Ofcom remains committed to the principle of six-day-a-week First-Class deliveries, making the UK an outlier in Europe.

In the same month, Ofcom launched a consultation into its plans to remove the policy of delivering Second-Class letters every day from Monday to Saturday. Ofcom told Daily Express that the result of the consultation, which finished on April 10, would be revealed this summer. Royal Mail lost a combined £768m in 2023 and 2024, and the regulator maintains that its proposed changes would save the company, run privately since 2013, £250m and £425m.

Despite its proposals, Ofcom remains committed to the principle of six-day-a-week First-Class deliveries, making the UK an outlier in Europe.

In Belgium, standard letter delivery was reduced from five days a week to 2.5 days a week in 2020. Before scrapping letter deliveries entirely last month, Denmark reduced the service to five days a week down from six in 2016. In 2018, the Scandinavian country reduced the offering again down to one day a week. Explaining the marked decline in letter deliveries in Denmark, PostNord Denmark's Managing Director, Kim Pedersen, told local media: "When a letter costs 29 Danish krone [£3.35] there will be fewer letters".

Even though most Danes now receive their post digitally, some 270,000, mostly elderly residents, still rely on physical mail.

Italy’s Poste Italiane S.p.A. only delivers letters in areas with low population density three days a week after reforms finalised in 2017. The Dutch government reduced PostNL’s letter deliveries to five days a week from six in 2014, while Norway’s postal service has delivered letters on alternate days, two-and-a-half days a week, from Monday to Friday since 2020. Sweden, which, like Norway, uses PostNord, also sees letters delivered every other day, two-and-a-half days a week, after reforms were made in 2021 and 2022.

France’s La Poste service still delivers letters six days a week. However, in March, state auditors told the postal service to reduce its offering, as letter deliveries, which used to account for 50% of its revenue in 2010, generated just 11% in 2023, according to the country’s Court of Audit.

Germany’s Deutsche Post also has a commitment to six-days-a-week letter delivery. However, the postal service no longer guarantees next day delivery, and instead aims to deliver letters a maximum of three days after they were sent.

[datasaint]

Wonder what Royal Mail's own estimations are on the longevity of letter post. I know Kretinsky has pledged to keep the USO going, but that's without mentioning the caveat of charging whatever he wants for it.

[Mr Rush]

"The world has changed, we're sending a third of the letters we were 20 years ago," Natalie Black, Ofcom's group director for networks and communications, said in January.

The period between 1980 and 2005 was the aberration. There's still as many as there were 90 years ago. It's like the lost decade in Japan - now three decades long and the preceding economic bubble consigned to ancient history.

Wonder what Royal Mail's own estimations are on the longevity of letter post.

Volumes have been on an exponential downward curve since 2005. It should bottom out at 1bn in 2050, though I expect every effort will be made to hasten the eschaton by jacking up the price of a stamp as seen in the Danish example.

[tramssirhc]

The Express is no friend of the working class. This is social conditioning. Telling us that the service is not wanted and repeating that lie is designed to devalue the service. Many of the postal services quoted in the article have been driven to destruction. 7 billion items is a massive amount of work. Anything the capitalist say should always be challenged. We were told we were living longer so we needed to work longer and final salary schemes had to shut. That's turned out to be untrue because the parasites in the capitalist class are only interested in short term gain for themselves. Don't listen to the CWU, the regulator and the industry. All they are interested in is profit. Lets start shouting about just how crucial our jobs are.

[Tman]

Dear oh dear.
The old Left ideology of attempting to retain jobs in fading industries, although the post above is particularly strong on the Wolfie rhetoric.
Physically transporting bits of paper across the country is an anachronism in the 21st century, sadly.

[tramssirhc]

Dear oh dear.
The old Left ideology of attempting to retain jobs in fading industries, although the post above is particularly strong on the Wolfie rhetoric.
Physically transporting bits of paper across the country is an anachronism in the 21st century, sadly.

And here we have a spokesperson for the CWU, the industry and the regulatory. Many cultures would call this plain and simple 'uncle tom'ing.