Ofcom’s ideas on how to reform the postal service were so well advertised in advance that the government had rejected two of them by the time the report landed. If the prime minister “will not countenance” scrapping postal deliveries on Saturdays, then a five-day service is a non-starter and a three-day version is completely off limits for now.
That, in theory – at least under this government – leaves only the surprise idea within Ofcom’s bundle: the one to slow down Royal Mail’s delivery speeds. It doesn’t have a simple name, but we could call it the “snail mail” proposal since it involves pushing the bulk of deliveries through a standard service taking “up to three days or longer”, as the regulator puts it. Urgent mail could still be delivered overnight, including for Saturdays, via a premium service that would operate outside the morning postal round – but you’d have to pay more than the current £1.25 cost of a first-class stamp.
