What is the future of Royal Mail in the UK?

With fewer of us sending letters and parcels, the Royal Mail is finding dealing with the nation’s post is an increasingly unprofitable and costly business.

Distinctive red Royal Mail box for letters, post and mail. - stock photo
(Image credit: Getty Images)

The days of six-days-a-week postal deliveries to all 32 million addresses across the UK are looking more shaky than ever after the communications regulator Ofcom unveiled its proposals for Royal Mail reform

The number of letters we send each year has slumped from 20 billion two decades ago to just seven billion now and is predicted to shrink further. That means the Royal Mail’s commitment to “universal service” is “getting out of date and will become unsustainable if we don’t take action”, according to Ofcom boss Melanie Dawes. 

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.