Overview
- Royal Mail’s owner is keeping its pilot in place at 35 delivery offices that test scrapping second‑class Saturday letters and moving some routes to every other weekday.
- Ofcom authorised the start of reforms from late July, lowering next‑day and three‑day delivery targets and introducing a 99% backstop that limits extreme delays.
- The regulator fined Royal Mail £21 million for missing 2024/25 targets after performance of 77% on time for first‑class and 92.5% for second‑class mail.
- Interim results show revenue up 1.5% to £3.98bn at Royal Mail and up 1.6% to £6.45bn for IDS, with GLS revenue rising 1.9% to £2.48bn in the half to September 28.
- IDS highlights higher costs, including around £120m from national insurance increases, and says it has hired 20,000 temporary staff, added 7,000 vans, and opened four seasonal parcel sorting centres before Christmas.