Royal Mail has been fined £1.6m by the communications regulator Ofcom for delivering letters late and overcharging for stamps

Royal Mail has been fined £1.6m by the communications regulator Ofcom for delivering letters late and overcharging for stamps.

Royal Mail Group plc is a British postal service and courier company, originally established in 1516. The company's subsidiary Royal Mail Group Limited operates the brands Royal Mail (letters) and Parcelforce Worldwide (parcels). General Logistics Systems, an international logistics company, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Mail Group.

The company provides mail collection and delivery services throughout the UK. Letters and parcels are deposited in a post or parcel boxes or are collected in bulk from businesses, this is then transported to Royal Mail sorting offices. Royal Mail owns and maintains the UK's distinctive red pillar boxes, first introduced in 1852, many of which bear the initials of the reigning monarch.^[2] Deliveries are made at least once every day except Sundays and bank holidays at uniform charges for all UK destinations. Royal Mail generally aims to make first class deliveries the next business day throughout the nation.^[3]

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The postal service is required by Ofcom to deliver 93% of first-class post within one working day of collecting it but Royal Mail failed to reach the target, with only 91.5% of post arriving on time during the 2018-19 financial year.

According to Royal Mail, it was hindered in its performance by roadworks carried out by Highways England but Ofcom said it still underperformed, even if we allow for the impact of the disruption.

Gaucho Rasmussen, Ofcom’s director of investigations and enforcement, said: “Many people depend on postal services and our rules are there to ensure they get a good service, at an affordable price.

“Royal Mail let its customers down and these fines should serve as a reminder that we’ll take action when companies fall short.”

Ofcom fined Royal Mail £1.5m for breach of obligations, which it said was not repeated this year, once the impact of Covid-19 was taken into account.

The regulator also instituted an additional fine of £100,000 having found that Royal Mail had overcharged customers for second-class stamps for a week in March 2019.

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The price of a second-class stamp was capped at 60p from 1 April 2018 to the end of March 2019 but Royal Mail exceeded this by a penny in the week before the cap was lifted.Royal

Customers were overcharged by £60,000, indicating that the postal service overcharged for 6m stamps during the week-long period, money that it is unable to refund.

“Given the harm caused and failure in its processes to stick to the price cap, we have decided to fine Royal Mail £100,000,” Ofcom said.

“It has since made changes to its compliance processes that it says will prevent this error from happening again.”

A spokesperson for Royal Mail said it was disappointed with its performance, adding: “We accept and understand Ofcom’s decision.

 “We accept and note Ofcom’s decision around the 2019 second-class price cap. We made a mistake.

“At the time, we sought to put this error right by publicly acknowledging our mistake.

“We also donated the revenue that we expected to make from this error – £60,000 – to our chosen charity Action for Children, which helps young people at risk of developing mental health problems.”

Royal Mail has been struggling with labour disputes and ever decreasing letter volumes, leading to the departure of its chief executive, Rico Back, in May.

The company, which was privatised in 2013, last month announced a cost-cutting plan that will involve about 2,000 job losses.

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