Post a First Class letter and there was a very good chance it would arrive the following morning.
Today, disgruntled customers increasingly refer to the service as “Royal Fail.”
It is an unflattering nickname, but the official figures suggest that the dissatisfaction behind it cannot simply be dismissed as grumbling.
According to Ofcom, during 2025/26 Royal Mail delivered just 75.7% of First Class mail within one working day, against the then target of 93%. Second Class achieved 90.2% within three working days, against a target of 98.5%.
Even more strikingly, Royal Mail failed to achieve its local First Class target in any of the 118 postcode areas measured during 2025/26. It also completed only 77.4% of daily delivery routes against a 99.9% target.
There are some areas were mail deliveries have fallen from six days out of seven to once a week, or even worse.
Some areas report mail delivery staff repeatedly delivering mail to the wrong address which then has to be re-delivered to the correct addresses by residents.
So what has gone wrong?
Part of the problem is that Royal Mail is trying to operate a network designed for a very different age.
Twenty years ago it was handling around 20 billion letters annually. By 2025 that had fallen to approximately 6.5 billion. Yet Royal Mail still has to maintain a nationwide delivery network serving millions of addresses.
That creates a difficult economic equation: fewer letters travelling through a network that still has to reach virtually every home and business in Britain.
But declining letter volumes cannot excuse persistent poor performance. Ofcom fined Royal Mail £21 million in October 2025 for missing its 2024/25 targets, following fines of £10.5 million for 2023/24 and £5.6 million for 2022/23.
There is also the question of priorities. Parcels have become increasingly important commercially as online shopping has expanded. Ofcom's current investigation into Royal Mail's 2025/26 performance specifically says it will consider the issue of parcel prioritisation.
For businesses, meanwhile, unreliable letters aren't merely inconvenient. Late invoices, contracts, replacement bank cards, legal documents and appointment letters can have genuine consequences.
Are lower standards the answer?
Ofcom has now changed the Universal Service requirements. From April 2026, the First Class target became 90% delivered the next working day and the Second Class target 95% within three working days. Second Class letters can also move to alternate-weekday delivery.
Importantly, new safeguards require 99% of First Class letters to arrive within three working days and 99% of Second Class letters within five.
There is a danger, however, that continually changing targets can look suspiciously like redefining success rather than improving the service.
How can Royal Mail be fixed?
First, Royal Mail needs sufficient frontline staff and realistic workloads so that completing delivery rounds becomes the norm rather than the exception.
Secondly, modernisation is unavoidable. Sorting, route planning, tracking and automation should be used to make postal workers more productive rather than simply cutting costs.
Thirdly, regulation needs teeth. Repeated fines clearly haven't yet produced consistently acceptable performance. Indeed, Parliament's Business and Trade Committee concluded in May 2026 that Ofcom had failed to drive improvements quickly enough.
There are signs that change may finally be coming. Royal Mail has committed to investing £500 million over five years as part of its improvement programme, while the new delivery model is expected to be rolled out by Christmas 2026.
But ultimately the test is remarkably simple.
Customers buy a First Class stamp because they expect First Class service. Businesses use Royal Mail because they expect their post to arrive reliably. People should not have to wonder whether an important letter will take one day, three days or considerably longer.
Royal Mail doesn't need another slogan or corporate reorganisation nearly as much as it needs to rediscover something much simpler: reliability.
If that happens, perhaps the “Royal Fail” nickname will eventually disappear.
Until then, unfortunately, Royal Mail has given its critics plenty of ammunition.
