As part of the GCA’s Cardmitment campaign to protect and promote the greeting card industry we have launched a parliamentary petition asking for parliamentary scrutiny of any planned changes to Royal Mail’s legal ‘Universal Service Obligations’.
What is the Universal Service Obligation (USO)?
The Royal Mail is the UK’s largest postal operator and also the UK’s Universal Service Provider. This means it must meet a set of obligations as set out in the Postal Services Act. These obligations include:
Why is the USO being amended?
Royal Mail have asked for the USO to be reviewed with a view to making changes. According to the Royal Mail, this is promoted by a change in customer needs & rising costs. The Royal Mail are also looking at the changes that have been implemented in other countries to see if similar changes in the UK would be of benefit. One of the proposals put forward is for second class deliveries to be carried out every other day rather than every day. This we believe would be detrimental to the greeting card industry.
To be clear, these are proposals being asked to be reviewed, and nothing is changing straight away. We believe any proposals for changes to the USO should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
What does the petition ask for?
The GCA petition calls on the Government to amend legislation to require parliamentary scrutiny on any change to the Royal Mail’s Universal Service Obligation (USO).
It also asks the government to insist any changes to the USO are dependent on:
We need at least 10,000 signatures on the petition to get a response from the government. Please can you sign this and also share the link with your team, customers and community.
