Citizens Advice responds to Royal Mail's latest Quality of Service results - August 2026
Responding to Royal Mail's latest Quality of Service results, which show the company hasn’t met its reduced delivery targets for 1st or 2nd class post between April and June 2026, Tom MacInnes, Director of Policy at Citizens Advice, said:
“Late post deliveries are continuing to wreak havoc on people’s lives, causing them to miss medical appointments, benefit decisions and bills.
“Sadly, it’s not a shock that Royal Mail still isn’t delivering post on time. Even with some improvement, the company hasn’t met any of its annual delivery targets for the last six years - leaving customers in the lurch while stamp prices soar. The price of a 1st class stamp has increased by 137% and 2nd class by 40% in the same period.
“Despite Ofcom lowering the company’s delivery targets in April, Royal Mail has already claimed it needs until next Spring before it can actually meet them. This is not good enough and fines for poor service have had little impact. We now want to see Ofcom using stamp price caps to ensure Royal Mail can’t go on increasing prices while missing targets.”
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Notes to editors:
This statement relates to Royal Mail’s Quality of Service results for Q1 (April - June 2026). This is the first quarter in which the company has new, lower delivery targets, set by the regulator Ofcom (see below for more information).
Last year Ofcom announced changes to the Universal Service Obligation (USO) held by Royal Mail. Now, the company only has to deliver 2nd class post on alternate weekdays, instead of six-days-a-week, Mon-Sat. This change was initially implemented at 35 pilot sites, and with a phased approach now in progress, full implementation is expected at all delivery offices by December.
Ofcom lowered Royal Mail’s headline annual delivery targets as part of the changes to the USO, which means that as of April 1st 2026, Royal Mail is only required to deliver 90% of 1st class mail within one working day (instead of 93%), and 95% of 2nd class mail within three days (instead of 98.5%).
In its improvement plan published in April 2026, Royal Mail said then that it aims to meet its new, lower delivery targets within 12 months.
The last time Royal Mail met a 1st class annual delivery target was the financial year 2016/17. The last time Royal Mail met a 2nd class annual delivery target was the financial year 2019/20.
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