Royal Mail: Wales business alarm over delivery cut plan

Business owners who post cards, cake toppers and letterbox gifts say they are alarmed at proposals to reduce some Royal Mail deliveries.

The regulator Ofcom has suggested cutting the number of delivery days and allowing first class post to take up to three days to arrive.

But business owners in Wales say they are worried about losing the reliability of the current service.

Royal Mail blamed the UK government and Ofcom for not acting.

It said other countries had transformed their postal systems but the UK was being "left behind".

Ofcom said it was launching a "national conversation" on the future of the postal service, warning that it may become unsustainable.

The Department of Business and Trade said it would consider any recommendations put forward by Ofcom.

"But ministers are not currently minded to introduce new legislation to change the current obligations on postal deliveries," it added.

The number of letters sent is half the total in 2011, while Ofcom said parcel deliveries had become "increasingly important".

It wants people's views as part of a consultation process which runs until 3 April.

Ofcom has set out two options to reform the service.

One of these would see letter delivery services take up to three days or longer, with a next-day service available for urgent letters.

The other option would see the number of letter delivery days reduced from six to five or three.

"Businesses that rely on it, like mine, will be suffering permanently," said Sandra Jervis, the owner of Creative Cove in Lampeter, Ceredigion.

She sells greetings cards, and worries customers will lose faith in the postal service and her sales will suffer.

It is the memory of the disruption to her business caused by postal strikes in 2022 and 2023 which concerns her most.

"In the lead-up to that Christmas where we had the strikes, we had customers coming in most days saying that they weren't going to send a Christmas card that year, because what was the point?" she said.

"It wasn't likely to get there, the service wasn't exactly reliable, they weren't going to get there on time."

Ms Jervis claimed the unpredictability of the service during strike action had cost her £3,000 in lost sales, and feared "habits… will change permanently" if the core service is reduced and deemed unreliable.

Cake supplies company The Vanilla Valley sends thousands of letter-sized deliveries every month from its warehouse in Nantgarw, Rhondda Cynon Taf.

"Anything you can put on a cake, we've got it here," director Steve Golding said.

He is wary of any reduction in Royal Mail's service, and said customers relied on it too.

"It's not good for companies like us. Everybody wants everything ordered today, delivered tomorrow," he said.

He uses a number of couriers for different types of products, but said Royal Mail offered the best value for letter-sized deliveries.

"It's a well-known fact that if it fits into a large letter format, it is much, much cheaper than sending it as a packet," he added.

"Only Royal Mail offers that [large letter] service, and a lot of the products we have are designed to fit into a large letter format."

Mr Golding said it was "more than double the price" to send the same product via an alternative courier.

He added: "For those small products, Royal Mail is critical."

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) found a quarter of Welsh companies view the six-day service from Royal Mail as "essential".

"It is that reliability that's crucial for business operations, crucial for us as customers," said Ben Cottam of the FSB in Wales.

"We are very alarmed at the prospect of Royal Mail reducing its service."

He said service obligations on the Royal Mail meant it "picks up the heavy lifting" outside urban areas, where commercial operators sometimes struggle to provide an alternative service.

"Rural businesses rely very heavily on the reliability of a Royal Mail six-day-a-week service. When we look at the options for consultation, we need that to be borne in mind," he said.

"Some of our more rural areas may well be disproportionately impacted by any reduction in service."

The Royal Mail's chief executive, Martin Seidenberg said: "Ofcom's report demonstrates that reform is urgently needed to protect the future of the one-price-goes-anywhere universal service.

"We are doing everything in our power to transform, but it is not sustainable to maintain a network built for 20 billion letters when we are now only delivering seven billion. "We have been calling on government and Ofcom to tackle this issue for four years, and the lack of action means that we are now facing a much more serious situation."

He said while other countries have "grasped the opportunity to change", the UK is "being left behind".