Technical and minor amendments in postal regulation - Notifications of proposed technical and other minor amendments to the Universal Postal Service Order and related conditions

  • Start: 05 September 2013
  • Status: Statement published
  • End: 07 October 2013

In October 2011, the Postal Services Act 2011 (“the Act”) came into force and Ofcom gained the responsibility and powers to regulate postal services.

Our primary duty under the Act is to carry out our functions in relation to postal services in a way that we consider will secure the provision of a universal postal service: the delivery and collection of mail everywhere in the UK at affordable and uniform prices, every working day (and on Saturday for letters). Ofcom has a legal duty under the Act to make an order describing the universal postal service. The first Order and associated regulatory conditions came into force on 1 April 2012, shortly after our statement, published in March 2012, containing our decision on the new regulatory framework. In our decision, we explained that we would retain essentially the same universal service provision as it was prior to the making of the first Order.

In March 2013, we published the conclusions of our first review of the extent to which the market for the provision of postal services in the United Kingdom is meeting the reasonable needs of users of those services. Following this review, we did not find that there was any need to make changes to the scope of the universal service.

In September 2013, we consulted on technical and other minor amendments to the Order and related regulatory conditions. Those minor amendments were intended to clarify the drafting of the Order and the scope of the regulatory obligations on Royal Mail to reflect current provision. We did not propose any changes to the scope of the universal service in practice. We explained that none of the proposed amendments had any practical impact on users, Royal Mail and other postal operators as, if made as we proposed, these proposed amendments would not have required any changes to Royal Mail’s current provision of the universal postal service.

This statement sets out Ofcom’s decision about the amendments proposed. It contains a copy of the Order Ofcom has made under section 30 of the Postal Services Act 2011, and notifications of modifications of regulatory conditions under Schedule 6 paragraph 3(3) of the Postal Services Act 2011.


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Royal_Mail.pdf (PDF File, 66.7 KB) Organisation