Investigation into Royal Mail’s quality of service performance in 2025/26

Ofcom has today opened an investigation into Royal Mail’s compliance with its quality of service performance targets during 2025/26. 

Our rules require Royal Mail to meet specified quality of service performance targets in the provision of universal service products. Among other targets, for the 2025/26 period, the requirement on Royal Mail was to: 

• 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 29 May 2026, Royal Mail announced that it did not meet the above performance targets in the 2025/26 period, as it:

• delivered 75.7% of first class mail within one working day of collection; and
• delivered 90.2% of second class mail within three working days of collection.

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

• whether Royal Mail has failed to comply with its obligations under DUSP condition 1.9.1 in respect of the 2025/26 regulatory period, including considering any improvements made by Royal Mail over that period; and 
• where there is a failure, whether it is appropriate to impose a financial penalty on Royal Mail for that failure, and the level of any penalty.