Royal Mail announced that its stamp prices for First Class and Second Class letters will remainunchanged this year while changes will be made to its parcel services.
Last year, Ofcom’s new regulatory framework for UK postal services gave the postal operator morefreedom to set prices. “We are pleased that we do not need to draw on this pricing freedom and willtherefore not increase our First and Second class stamp prices for letters and Large Letters thisyear,” Royal Mail explained.
The British postal regulator put a cap on Second Class stamps for letters of 55p, indexed inline with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for seven years. But there was no cap for First Classstamp prices.
The First Class and Second Class letter stamps will remain at 60p and 50 p respectively, as wellas the prices for First Class and Second Class Large Letter stamps at 90p and 69 p.
In terms of parcel services, Royal Mail is making changes to its parcels range for consumers andbusiness customers paying with stamps, smartstamp, online postage and franking. The changes followa public consultation announced in December last year.
From 2 April onwards, customers will be able to send for the first time parcels weighing 1-20kgvia Royal Mail’s Second Class service. “We believe the increase in Second Class weight limit to20kg is a very meaningful addition to customer choice. As a result of this improvement, ourStandard Parcel product will be withdrawn. In addition, the number of First Class weight bands forparcels will more than halve, from 15 currently, to seven.”
Royal Mail is also introducing two parcel categories including small parcels and medium parcels.Previously, prices have been set only according to weight. Since the size of a parcel impacts thecost of collecting, transporting, sorting and delivering an item, this will now be reflected in theprice. “This will bring Royal Mail in line with other major postal operators, for example, inGermany, France and Italy,” the company added.
