Citizens Advice responds to Ofcom launching an investigation into Royal Mail's service performance

Responding to the news that Ofcom is to open an investigation into Royal Mail's quality of service results for the financial year 2024-25, Tom MacInnes, Director of Policy at Citizens Advice, said:

“We welcome Ofcom opening an investigation into Royal Mail’s woeful track record when it comes to missing recent delivery targets. 

“But make no mistake - these failures to deliver post on time have been going on for more than half a decade. As a result, people are missing health appointments, fines, bills and vital government communications. 

“Previous fines have gone some way to show that Ofcom recognises Royal Mail’s persistent failings, but we need to see the regulator go much further and take enforcement action that pushes the company to clean up its act and improve its services once and for all.”

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Notes to editors:

  1. Royal Mail was fined £10.5m for failing to meet its delivery targets in the 2023/24 financial year in December. This fine equated to 0.08% of the IDS Group’s revenue for that financial year.

  2. Royal Mail was also fined £5.6m for failing to meet its delivery targets in the 2022/23 financial year.

  3. 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.

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

  5. 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.

  6. Citizens Advice service staff are supported by more than 19,000 trained volunteers, working at over 1,900 service outlets across England and Wales.

  7. 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. 

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