Royal Mail has once again failed to meet its delivery targets, leaving people waiting for important letters while its management congratulates itself on an “encouraging” improvement.
Between March and June, 85 percent of first-class post arrived the next day. That was up from 76 percent during the same period last year, but still well below Ofcom’s 90 percent target.
Second-class performance also remained below the required standard. Royal Mail delivered 91 percent of second-class post within three days, against a target of 95 percent.
The company said the figures were “encouraging and show that the work we are doing to improve the service is having an impact”. Chief operating officer Jamie Stephenson said first-class performance was ahead of the company’s own improvement plan, while second class was progressing as expected.
But Royal Mail doesn’t get to set the standard according to what makes its management look competent. The targets exist because people depend on the postal service. A late hospital letter isn’t transformed into a success because the company performed slightly less badly than it did last year.
Residents in Gloucester have experienced delays lasting months, forcing Royal Mail to admit that its service in the area was “totally unacceptable”. More recently, people in Worcestershire reported waiting weeks for important post, with some missing hospital appointments as a result.
Royal Mail is now under investigation by Ofcom for failing to meet its targets for the second year running. Last October, the regulator fined the company a record £21 million for its performance during 2024-25.
These fines document the failure without touching its cause. They leave the postal network under the same ownership and governed by the same commercial priorities. No regulator can make the pursuit of profit identical to meeting a social need.
Royal Mail says it will spend £500 million over five years improving its network and aims to meet Ofcom’s targets by May 2027. This is presented as a generous investment, as though maintaining a functioning postal system were a gift from its owners rather than the basic purpose of the organisation.
Management’s talk of a “turnaround” also hides the role of the workers who keep the service functioning. In his statement, Stephenson acknowledged the “continued hard work of our frontline colleagues, including through the recent extreme heat”.
That hard work hasn’t stopped workers from being put under pressure to conceal the scale of the problems. In March, postal workers across Britain told the BBC that they were being asked to move or hide mail from senior bosses so that depots appeared to be meeting their targets. The contradiction is stark: workers are praised when their labour produces improved figures, but the system places them under pressure to disguise failures created above them.
Royal Mail points to falling letter volumes and growing competition as explanations for its poor performance. But these become a crisis only because the postal system is run for profit. A nationwide service has to reach every address, including routes that produce little or no return, while rival firms can concentrate on the most profitable parts of the market. What capital treats as an expensive burden is the very work required to provide a universal postal service.
For capital, fewer letters mean a declining market and pressure to cut costs. For the public, the letters that remain can contain hospital appointments and other information that can’t simply arrive whenever it suits the company. How people need to use the postal service and how it maximises profit are two different things.
This contradiction has deepened since Royal Mail’s privatisation began in 2013. A piece of essential national infrastructure was turned into a commercial asset, bought and sold according to the interests of investors. International Distribution Services, Royal Mail’s parent company, was itself bought by Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský in 2025.
The takeover illustrates what capitalist ownership means in practice. A communications network built through generations of workers’ labour can pass into the hands of a billionaire, while the people who operate it and depend upon it have no control over its priorities.
Royal Mail’s failure isn’t the result of postal workers refusing to work hard, nor has the public need for reliable deliveries disappeared. It follows from running social infrastructure as a commodity. To a patient, a missing letter can mean a missed hospital appointment. To private capital, delivering it is simply another cost to be balanced against the return on an investment.
