Royal Mail was privatised more than a decade ago, but under the Universal Service Obligation it is still legally required to deliver letters across the UK at a set price six days a week.
Under Ofcom’s rules, the postal operator is meant to deliver at least 93% of first class mail within one working day, and 98.5% of second class post within three working days.
However, in the year to the end of March it missed both targets, reaching figures of just 74.7% and 92.7% respectively.
Ofcom said the company had blamed its poor performance on its challenging financial position, and on delays to a ballot on a pay deal following strike action by members of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) last year.
However, Ofcom said: “We do not consider either of these to be justifiable reasons for Royal Mail’s failure to provide the levels of service expected of it.
“Royal Mail took insufficient and ineffective steps to try and prevent this failure, which is likely to have impacted millions of customers who did not get the service they paid for.”
The CWU said Royal Mail’s poor performance was due to a “deliberate, sustained dismantling of UK postal services by a failed board and senior management team” rather than union action.
It said the last day of national strike action was in December 2022, so to partially blame missing delivery targets in 2023-24 on the CWU “shows the lack of credibility and integrity” by the board.
Last year, Royal Mail was fined £5.6m for failing to meet delivery targets in 2022-23.
Ofcom said that in addition to the fine, it had been pressing the company to see what it was doing to improve its performance.
While there had been some progress, it said the improvement in 2023-24 had only been marginal and “it needs to do much better”.
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