Postal services in the United Kingdom

Postal services in the United Kingdom are provided predominantly by the Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd (which oversees post offices). Since 2006, the market has been fully opened to competition which has thrived in business-to-business delivery, but not in ordinary letter delivery.

The industry is regulated by Ofcom and consumer interests are represented by Consumer Focus. Since 1 October 2011, the main piece of legislation is the Postal Services Act 2011, although some parts of the Postal Services Act 2000 are still in force. The 2011 Act enables the government to privatise Royal Mail and to possibly mutualise Post Office Ltd.

History
Main article: Postage stamps and postal history of Great Britain

The quality of postal services in the 17th and 18th centuries improved with development of better roads and means of transportation.[1]

Anthony Trollope is credited with major contributions to the development of postal services in the years 1851-1867, described, e.g. in Chapters 8 and 13 of his autobiography.[2]

Law

Industry

Currently there are a small number of postal services operating within the United Kingdom. Most notably and previously mentioned is the Royal Mail. But after the opening up of the industry competitors such as Whistl and UK Mail have found their place offering business postal solutions.

1) UK Mail 2) Northern Mail 3) The Delivery Group 4) Whistl 5) Central Mailing Services 6) Citipost Mail

These companies, despite being competitors to the Royal Mail, do however hand over their sorted mail to the Royal Mail for last mile delivery due to the sheer dominance they hold in a process called 'Down Stream Access'.[3]

Whistl or then known TNT Post[4] did attempt to do the entire supply chain (That being: Collection, Sorting, Distribution and Delivery) in London, Liverpool and Manchester. Beyond these regions they continued to use down stream access.

However these efforts failed when LDC, a division of the Lloyd's banking group decided against investing in Whistl because of "ongoing changes in UK postal market dynamics and the complexity of the regulatory landscape".

Whistl said: "Following the announcement from LDC that it would not proceed with the proposed investment... to fund further rollout of E2E [end-to-end] we have now commenced an extensive review of the viability and potential for the rollout of an e2e postal delivery service in the UK".[5]

References
  1. Her Majesty's mails: an historical and descriptive account of the British Post Office by William Lewins, published by Sampson, Low and Martin in 1864.
  2. Trollope, Anthony (1883). An Autobiography. Chapter 2. Retrieved 2010-07-02.
  3. https://www.amsnet.co.uk/postage-services-and-costs/what-is-a-downstream-access-provider-dsa.html
  4. https://postandparcel.info/62638/news/royal-mails-challenger-tnt-post-uk-to-rebrand-as-whistl/
  5. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32686828

See also


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