Royal Mail has found a novel way to reframe consistent underperformance: call it improvement. The postal service announced this week that it is on track to hit Ofcom’s reduced targets, which now accept that three-quarters of first class mail arriving on time is acceptable. This is the regulatory equivalent of a student telling their parents that getting a D is actually a win because the teacher lowered the grade curve.
Let’s be clear about what happened here. Royal Mail was supposed to deliver 93% of first class mail within one working day. They could not do it. So instead of fixing the problem, the regulator and the postal service agreed that 75% would be fine. This is not improvement. This is surrender with a press release.
But Royal Mail is framing it as a success. The service is improving, they claim. They are on track. The language matters because it allows them to avoid saying the obvious: one in four pieces of first class mail is now expected to arrive late, and everyone has decided this is normal.
The absurdity deepens when you consider what Royal Mail could do with this newfound honesty about delays. If we are going to accept that slowness is a feature, not a bug, why not lean into it? Introduce a tiered pricing model. First class mail that arrives on time costs the standard rate. First class mail that arrives whenever—three days, five days, whenever the mood strikes—costs 25% less. Call it the “Creative Delay” service. Market it as a feature for people who are not in a hurry. For invoices, bills, and legal documents, there is already a precedent: Royal Mail has been offering this service for years, free of charge.
The math is almost funny. Royal Mail is essentially saying that one-quarter of the mail they handle is fair game for lateness. That is not a service standard. That is a margin of error the size of a small country. If a restaurant told you that three-quarters of your orders would arrive at the right temperature, you would go somewhere else. If an airline told you that 75% of flights would land within 24 hours of the scheduled time, the regulatory agency would shut them down. But for mail, which has been a public service for centuries, we have collectively decided that this is acceptable.
What makes this worse is the timing. Royal Mail is a private company now, run for profit. Ofcom reduced the targets because the company could not meet the old ones. This is regulatory capture dressed up as pragmatism. The company that cannot deliver the service sets the terms, the regulator nods along, and the public adjusts their expectations downward. No one is held accountable. No one loses their job. The service gets worse, the targets get easier, and everyone calls it progress.
The real kicker is that people still use Royal Mail. Businesses still rely on it. People still expect their post to arrive. But now one in four of those expectations will be disappointed, and that is officially fine. Royal Mail has not improved. They have simply redefined the problem out of existence.
If you are waiting for an important document, there is now a 25% chance it will be late. Royal Mail will tell you that is improvement. They are not wrong—it is an improvement for them, because they no longer have to try as hard. For everyone else, it is just slower mail with a better excuse.