Royal Mail has issued a disruption alert for 14 postcode areas across the UK, following a week of no deliveries or collections due to the Spring Bank Holiday. Services were suspended on Monday, May 25, and while they resumed the next day, delays persist in parts of London, Nottingham, and Leamington Spa as of Monday, June 1.
The company stated: “We aim to deliver to all addresses we have mail for, six days a week. In a small number of local offices, this may temporarily not be possible due to local issues such as high levels of sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors.” Royal Mail said it would rotate deliveries to minimise inconvenience and provide targeted support to affected offices.
Despite the delays, Royal Mail’s air and road network has operated on schedule over the past 24 hours. The warning comes after the firm was fined £21 million by Ofcom in October for missing delivery targets, having delivered just 77% of First Class post and 92.5% of Second Class post on time in 2024-25.
Royal Mail has pledged to improve First Class Next Day delivery to around 85% within nine months and to 90% within a year, while aiming to deliver 93% of Second Class letters within three days over nine months and 95% by May next year. By March, it reported delivering 81.1% of First Class mail within one working day and 90.2% of Second Class mail within three working days.
Chief operating officer Jamie Stephenson said: “We’re putting significant investment into improving reliability and reaching these new delivery targets, but delivering lasting change across a network of this scale takes time. Universal Service reform is a key part of that, helping us adapt the network to reflect how people send and receive mail today while protecting the one-price-goes-anywhere service for the future.”
