Yesterday Ofcom agreed to Royal Mail's request to deliver 2nd class mail slower and on fewer days. Great, said Royal Mail, we'll start doing just that from 28th July. You'll either have to post your letters and cards earlier or shrug and put up with it.
There are three key aspects.
a) Saturdays will be excluded
b) Deliveries will take place on alternate weekdays
c) Delivery targets will be eased
The Saturday thing
Currently Ofcom requires "at least one collection every Monday to Saturday" and "at least one delivery every Monday to Saturday". In future, for 2nd class mail, Saturdays will be removed from the requirements.
This means if you want a letter to arrive by Saturday, you'll have to readjust your posting date so it arrives by Friday. For example if someone you know has a birthday on Saturday 26th July, posting it three days before on Wednesday July 23rd should be adequate. But if someone you know has a birthday on Saturday 2nd August, it'll need to go in the box a day earlier on Tuesday 29th July.
The change won't affect letters posted on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays because these should continue to arrive before Saturday. But it will affect letters posted on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, all of which should arrive later because Saturday's no longer a "working day".
Although Saturday will no longer be counted as a 2nd class collection day, in practice Royal Mail intends to collect letters anyway. This is because 1st class letters do still have to be collected on Saturdays and Royal Mail doesn't know which is which until they've been collected. However although 1st class letters will continue to enter the sorting process immediately, 2nd class letters can now be set aside on Saturday and sorted on Monday.
The alternate weekdays thing
This is where Royal Mail starts significantly saving money. Currently it has to deliver 2nd class mail six days a week. In future it only has to deliver on alternate weekdays, which is just two or three days a week.
Here's their graphic.
The expectation is that one week you'll get 2nd class mail delivered on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the next week only on Tuesday and Thursday. Previously all twelve boxes in this grid would have contained a green envelope, now only five do.
Effectively Royal Mail will split their delivery routes into two halves, A and B. On any particular day only one or the other will get 2nd class deliveries. This means only half the staff will be needed, hence considerable savings.
Here's my graphic.
Previously you'd never go more than one day without a potential 2nd class delivery. Now you might go three days without one, with either Friday-Sunday or Saturday-Monday skipped each week.
Viewed like this it is a remarkable drop in service. Ofcom's gambit is that you'll barely notice - all the same mail will still arrive, just imperceptibly later.
Also the A/B pattern won't always be rigidly stuck to. In weeks with a Bank Holiday Monday the same delivery pattern as last week will apply, so Week 1 will be followed by Week 1 or Week 2 by Week 2. It means the usual gap of '2 working days' will still apply, even if in reality that means no 2nd class post from Thursday to Tuesday or from Friday to Wednesday.
1st class mail will continue to be delivered daily, even on Saturdays, probably alongside parcels. The downside is that decoupling 1st and 2nd class deliveries may end up costing Royal Mail extra, and this could be passed on to the consumer by raising 1st class prices even further.
The eased target thing
Currently Royal Mail are tasked with delivering 98.5% of 2nd class mail within three days. The new D+3 target is 95%, or nineteen letters out of twenty, an easement to reflect the introduction of alternate day delivery.
At present Royal Mail have three potential days to deliver 2nd class mail and still hit their target. In the future they may have two potential delivery days or they may have just one, depending on which Week it is. For example a 2nd class letter posted on Monday could currently be delivered on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. In future the delivery window will either be Tuesday/Thursday or just Wednesday, which doesn't leave Royal Mail much room for error.
A new D+5 target of 99% will also be introduced. This is to try to stop delayed mail hanging around in the system, in this case for any longer than a week. Combine the two and Royal Mail now has to deliver 95% of 2nd class mail within 3 days and 99% within 5 days. For half the population this gives them just two opportunities to deliver.
1st class targets are also being changed. Currently 93% should be delivered the next day and this is being reduced to 90%. Ofcom argues this should aid efficiencies and is still higher than comparable European countries. Again there's a new 'tail' target, specifically that 99% of 1st class mail be delivered in three days.
within 1 day
within 3 days
within 5 days
1st class
90% (was 93%)
99% (new)
2nd class
95% (was 98.5%)
99% (new)
It's not much of an easement all told, but expect your mail to be arriving inexorably slower all the same.
An example
Currently a 2nd class letter posted on a Wednesday has a 98.5% chance of being delivered by Saturday.
Next month a 2nd class letter posted on a Wednesday has a 95% chance of being delivered by Monday.
It's not the end of the world.
But it's not great.
• Letter volumes reached their highest point around 2005 but have been falling since, and have halved since 2011.
• 1st class stamps increased from £1.10 in April 2023 to £1.70 in April 2025, and 2nd class from 75p to 87p.
• 62% of residential users agreed they send fewer letters because of the cost.
• On average, a UK household spends 60p per week on postal services.
• One in four UK adults would struggle to afford a book of 2nd class stamps if they had to buy them next week.
• As of last month, redirected mail changed from being treated as a 1st class service to a 2nd class service.
• The new 'tail' targets should mean that virtually no 1st class mail is delivered later than 2nd class.
• Ofcom reckons stamp prices would rise faster in the future if these changes weren't introduced.
• Some restructuring may be necessary, so don't expect everything to change with a bang on 28th July.
In summary
Ofcom wants you to know two things...
✉ Unless there are 1st class or other priority letter or parcels for you, you will not receive letter deliveries on Saturday.
✉ Any 2nd class letters posted on Wednesday to Saturday may arrive a day later than now (excluding Sunday).
