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 Universal Service Provider. This means it must meet a set of obligations as set out in the Postal Services Act. These obligations include:
What are the proposed amendments to the USO?
Royal Mail have asked for the USO to be reviewed with a view to reducing the letters service. According to the Royal Mail, this is promoted by a change in customer needs & rising costs. The postal regulator, Ofcom, has now launched a consultation suggesting changes to the frequency of 2nd class letters; changing the frequency of delivery to alternative weekdays (Monday to Friday), with 1st class continuing to be delivered 6 days a week.
We want to see a thriving Royal Mail, and understand changes are necessary. However we are concerned that small businesses and consumers’ needs are not being understood in the now 24/7 world.
Why are the GCA concerned?
We believe these proposals would be detrimental to the greeting card industry, leaving businesses and consumers reliant on an unregulated 1st class service to be certain of a delivery date or for a Saturday delivery.
1st class stamps have increased in price 5 times in the last 3 years, in October 2024 alone by 22%,  and now cost £1.65, vs 85p for the regulated 2nd class stamp. We are concerned about the impact of these proposals on small businesses across the country sending out B2C orders, and of course greeting card consumers wishing to connect with their loved ones (plus those expecting NHS, legal letters etc). The impact of this change will be felt across the High Street, eg see comments by CEO of National Federation of Sub-postmasters, Calum Greenhow who cited 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.
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. Also download our petition below and display it in your office or retail stores.
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