Royal Mail not rolling out further changes to second-class post until early 2026

The owner of Royal Mail has said it will not roll out changes that will see it ditch second-class letter deliveries on Saturdays more widely across the UK until early next year.

International Distribution Services (IDS) – which was bought by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group last year for £3.6 billion – has been running a pilot across 35 delivery offices to overhaul letter delivery services, including scrapping second-class deliveries on Saturdays and changing the service to every other weekday.

It was given the green light by regulator Ofcom to start making the reforms from the end of July.

But in its half-year results on Wednesday, the group said it would not begin further rolling out the new regime more widely until early 2026.

IDS chief executive Martin Seidenberg had said, alongside full-year figures in September, that the reforms were a “massive task” and that it would “take the time to get this right” and not rush into expanding the reforms across its nationwide network.

IDS said at the time that it was too early to say when the changes would be completed and which of its 1,200 delivery offices would be next in line for the overhaul.

Ofcom fined Royal Mail £21 million last month for missing its annual first and second-class mail delivery targets, leading to millions of letters arriving late across the UK.

It marked the third-largest fine ever imposed by the communications watchdog.

Royal Mail delivered 77% of first-class mail and 92.5% of second-class mail on time during the 2024/25 financial year, Ofcom found.

As part of the reforms to the universal postal service, Ofcom has lowered targets for first-class post to be delivered the next day from 93% to 90% and second-class to be delivered within three days from 98.5% to 95%.

But Ofcom has added a new “enforceable” backstop delivery target, so that 99% of mail has to be delivered no more than two days late.

The latest interim figures showed revenues at Royal Mail lifted 1.5% to £3.98 billion in the six months to September 28, as a 3.2% rise for parcels business offset a 0.4% fall for letters.

Total revenues across the wider IDS group rose 1.6% to £6.45 billion, with the GLS international parcel business seeing revenues increase by 1.9% to £2.48 billion.

Royal Mail said the performance was set against a “backdrop of rising costs and macroeconomic pressures which are expected to continue into 2026”.

“These include national insurance contribution increases of around £120 million, increased wage costs in the UK business and complexities in the global trading environment,” the group said.

It also said it had hired 20,000 temporary workers ahead of the busy Christmas season, with 7,000 new vans and the opening of four seasonal parcel sorting centres with an additional 118,000 square metres of extra space, which it said was equivalent to 16.5 football pitches.

Mr Seidenberg said: “We never underestimate the important role we play at Christmas and we are hiring more people, opening temporary parcel sorting centres and putting more vans on the road to deliver for our customers again this year.”