Letter deliveries are changing to deliver a better all-round service
Royal Mail plays a vital role in connecting the nation through its one-price-goes-anywhere service. For many years, the Universal Service Obligation has required us to collect and deliver letters to every UK address six days a week.
Following an extensive consultation process involving many stakeholders, Ofcom announced reforms to the Universal Service in July 2025.
Letters remain an important means of keeping us connected, but fewer are being sent these days. These changes to the Universal Service will help us deliver a more reliable and sustainable service for you in the future.
You can read more about the changes, and what they’ll mean for you, below.
What’s changing – and what’s staying the same
Ofcom’s reforms to the Universal Service include changes to how your letters will be delivered.
What’s changing:
- 2nd Class and other non-1st Class letters will be delivered every other weekday (Monday to Friday). We aim to deliver 2nd Class mail within three weekdays.
- Standard bulk business letters (used for items like bills and statements) will move to a three day delivery aim, aligned with 2nd Class.
- New reliability targets for 1st and 2nd Class services will be introduced. You can read more about these in our FAQs below.
Universal Service reform is critical to enable us to drive a step change in our quality of service to you. It’s been a year of significant progress ahead of full implementation of our new delivery model. As we approach Christmas, our busiest time of the year, we are pausing any further changes to the Universal Service, with the aim to start implementing reform from early 2026.
Change will not be immediate - this is a significant reform which will be rolled out over time. We will keep you updated on our plans and would like to thank you for your patience.
2nd Class Deliveries
Here’s a table demonstrating when you might expect to receive 2nd Class letters under the changes, across a two-week period, if you have 2nd Class items that are due to be delivered to you:
Here is when you may expect your 2nd Class mail to be delivered by, based on the day of posting:
| Day of posting | New delivery-due day |
| Monday | Thursday |
| Tuesday | Friday |
| Wednesday | Monday |
| Thursday | Tuesday |
| Friday | Wednesday |
| Saturday | Thursday |
| Sunday | Thursday |
What’s staying the same
- One-price-goes-anywhere service across the UK
- 1st Class letters delivered six days a week (Monday to Saturday)
- Choice of 1st and 2nd Class for letters and parcels
- Parcels delivered up to seven days a week
We’re here to keep you informed
We’ll continue to update this page as the changes roll out.
FAQs
It will take time to roll out these new ways of working and we’ll keep you updated on our plans. Thank you for your patience while we make these crucial changes.
Delivery for 1st Class letters continues to be next day, six days a week.
2nd Class letters will be delivered every other weekday (Monday to Friday). It will therefore be delivered on the next scheduled delivery day – and typically by the following Wednesday.
Yes, Bank Holidays may affect delivery days. Details of public and local holidays are available on our Service Updates page.
No – parcels will continue to be delivered up to seven days a week.
Ofcom has revised the speed targets for the delivery of 1st and 2nd Class letters to make them more realistic. For 1st Class mail, we will aim to deliver 90% next-day, and for 2nd Class mail, we will aim to deliver 95% within three weekdays.
Ofcom has also introduced new reliability targets so that 99% of 1st Class mail should arrive within three days and 99% of 2nd Class mail within five days. The new targets come into effect from 1 April 2026.