(Reuters) -British regulator Ofcom said on Friday it would investigate whether there were reasonable grounds for believing that postal company Royal Mail has failed to comply with its service obligations in 2024/25.
The investigation comes after Royal Mail said that 76.5% of first class mail arrived within one working day, and 92.2% of second class mail were delivered within three days – both below the targets set by the watchdog, which oversees postal services.
“We are actively modernising Royal Mail, and while these efforts are beginning to deliver results, we know there is still more to do,” Royal Mail’s Chief Operating Officer Alistair Cochrane said in a statement.
Royal Mail had been fined for missing its delivery targets in 2023/24 and 2022/23.
The over 500-year old firm has called for reforms to the nationwide single-price first- and second-class service obligation and proposed the introduction of new additional reliability targets.
Royal Mail’s parent company International Distribution Services agreed to be taken over by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky last year. The deal suffered a delay earlier this year and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2025.
(Reporting by DhanushVignesh Babu and Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
