Investigation into Royal Mail’s quality of service performance in 2024/25

Ofcom has today opened an investigation into Royal Mail’s compliance with its quality of service performance targets during 2024/25. 

Our rules require Royal Mail to meet specified quality of service performance targets in the provision of universal service products. Among other targets, Royal Mail must: 

• deliver 93% of first class mail within one working day of collection; and 
• deliver 98.5% of second class mail within three working days of collection 

Performance against these targets is measured as an average performance level on an annual basis excluding the Christmas period. 

On 23 May 2025, Royal Mail announced that it did not meet the above performance targets in the 2024/25 period, as it:

• delivered 76.5% of first class mail within one working day of collection; and
• delivered 92.2% of second class mail within three working days of collection.

Last year we fined Royal Mail £10.5 million for its poor performance against the targets and for not improving enough on the previous year's performance. We also made it clear that when customers are not receiving the level of service they should be, we expect Royal Mail to take appropriate steps to deliver significant and continuous improvement.  

Ofcom takes compliance with the quality of service targets very seriously and in light of Royal Mail’s reported performance, we intend to investigate: 

• whether there are reasonable grounds for believing that Royal Mail has failed to comply with its obligations under DUSP condition 1.9.1 in respect of the 2024/25 regulatory period, including considering any improvements made by Royal Mail over that period; and 
• where there is a failure, whether it may be appropriate to impose a financial penalty on Royal Mail for that failure, and the level of any penalty.