Why the GCA Is Concerned About Ofcom’s Consultation on the Universal Service
This consultation closes on 10th April 2025. It is really important that everyone in the greeting card industry takes time to respond, however briefly, to highlight to Ofcom the issues for our industry with spiralling unregulated 1st class postal costs, and potential reduction of 2nd class deliveries to 2 or 3 days a week.
The GCA Council are deeply concerned that Ofcom’s current consultation on the future of the postal Universal Service is unbalanced and risks undermining the long-term viability of letter-sending in the UK. Specifically, in our view:
- It fails to consider how regulatory decisions affect consumer behaviour, increasing the risk of an accelerated decline in volumes — and potentially a future public bailout of Royal Mail.
- It gives too much weight to Royal Mail’s financial pressures and not enough to the public, social and economic value of a reliable postal service.
- It relies on flawed or incomplete data — including assumptions we first challenged over a year ago, see GCA response to Ofcom review April 2024.
- It risks misleading the public, with headline messaging that does not accurately reflect the trade-offs or wider consequences.
Action Needed from Members
The GCA are engaging directly with Ofcom, Royal Mail and Government — but we need your help.
Please sign our petition and submit your own consultation response, Together, we can make sure your voice is heard. Send your response to futurepostaluso@ofcom.org.uk or put your message in a card and send to
Future development of the postal USO team
Ofcom
Riverside House
2A Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 9HA
Help responding to Ofcom’s Consultation:
Ofcom’s consultation runs to several hundreds of pages. We encourage everyone to read it to reach your own views.
If you’re struggling for time, we’ve summarised our key concerns above and also drafted a response form that you can email to Ofcom highlighting the key issues; download draft response form below.
Ofcom 2025 Review of the Postal Service – Consultation details
On 30th January 2025 Ofcom announced a package of proposed reforms to our postal service, the Universal Service Obligation (USO) and changes to Royal Mail’s obligation to provide access to its letter network.
Currently the USO requires the delivery of First Class and Second Class letters six days a week (Monday to Saturday).
Ofcom proposes to allow Royal Mail to deliver 2nd class letters on alternate weekdays (Monday to Friday), with no Saturday delivery. This leaving card senders posting cards to arrive at the weekend with no option but to use the unregulated 1st class service – with stamps now costing £1.70 (from April 7th, after 6 price increases in the last 3 years), compared to 87p for a 2nd class stamp- currently regulated by the USO.
The announcement resulted in lots of media focus on the card industry with GCA members Pip Heywood MD Thortful, Heidi Early co-owner of Earlybird and GCA’s CEO Amanda Fergusson speaking to the ITV, BBC LBC among others raising the profile of greeting cards and talking about the importance of greeting cards to the British public.
Concern has been expressed by others about the impact on the High St, such as Calum Greenhow, CEO of National Federation of Sub-postmasters, who called on postmasters to unite – citing recent PO research “... 75% of postmasters believe it could have a large or extremely large impact on their post office business and 64% believe it would have a significant impact on their non-post office business“.
Ofcom are asking for feedback on these proposals, and could then implement them without any changes to the law. We believe any proposals for changes to our 500 year old postal service should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, so please sign our petition!
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