Not content with the cost of a first class letter being almost prohibitive at £1.65, it will be increasing the cost to £1.70. Fortunately, second class postage, as it is regulated, is only rising 2p from 85p to 87p.

The latest rises will simply exacerbate the issue of declining mail volumes, as the more the price is raised, the less people use the post. Online services are now starting to proliferate and most major institutions now nudge their customers to dealing with them online, meaning no more paper bills in the post.

The rises, whilst expected, come as another blow to those who regularly use the postal system as currently second class post can take between two and ten days to be delivered, even when the recipient is a few miles away. First class post is often delayed and Royal Mail are regularly being fined for missing their standard delivery targets.

To deal with this, Royal Mail are looking to vary the conditions of the Universal Service Obligation and drop at least one of their deliveries. Whilst this is meeting with residence amongst consumer groups, it would simply be an official recognition of what has already become ‘de facto’ standard practice. Many homes simply don’t receive mail on certain days of the week and some, just on one or two specific days.

At 87p, second class post still represents good value, given the cost of running a nation-wide postal system, but further rises will make the service even less appealing and the end result could well be the same as Denmark, who will officially cease all mail services in the country at the end of 2025.

So, price rise or no, use it or lose it is the message for all fans of second class stamps!

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Today’s increase in the price of first-class stamps is the second price rise in a year, with a first-class stamp in September 2023 costing £1.10, today it has gone up to £1.65 following a shift to £1.35 in April of this year.

Of course, most people these days tend to use second-class stamps if possible as they understand that adding a first-class stamp does nothing to improve its speed of delivery to certain parts of the country.

As an example, sitting today in the North West of England, we’ve had no post through the door since last Thursday, meaning three days without any mail deliveries. Given that we typically get over a dozen pieces of mail every week, it’s a rock solid certainty that somewhere at our local sorting office there’s a small pile of letters waiting to be delivered.

Like many other households, we understand the issue. Royal Mail have dropped or consolidated rounds (known in the trade as ‘dropping a frame’) which means that often, our pastiche cannot physically complete the whole round in a day. When post does arrive, which is likely to be tomorrow, it’s almost guaranteed that the postmarked items will have Friday’s date on them, irrespective of whether they were sent first or second class.

A recent online commentator suggested that someone take Royal Mail to court under the trades description act, as their ability to deliver a letter the following day now seems in question for anyone outside of the major conurbations.

Either way, the price rises today for first-class stamps to £1.65 for a standard letter and first-class large letter jumps up 50p to £2.60. When the second-class equivalents are so much cheaper it makes you wonder if first-class post in the U.K. is sustainable moving forward.

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This enormous 22% increase puts 30p on the cost of a first-class letter and is driven, we are told, by “very real and urgent” financial pressures. It total it makes the rise this year 55p, which is a 33% rise in the cost of sending a letter.

Whilst it makes sense to increase the price of your product or services when, as a business, you are faced with an imbalance between revenues and costs, in this instance it makes no sense. Economically, the price is not as elastic as they would like to think and this will inevitably lead to a decrease in first-class mail volumes and, ultimately, a further decline in mail volumes overall.

Add to this mix the fact that the price of a basic second class letter remains at 85p and it is clear that most rational people will simply switch to the ‘slower’ service.

The reality is that deliveries of second-class letters often arrive at the same time as first-class letters, or if not, then the next day. With the price of a second class stamp currently capped until 2029 it seems that Royal Mail are trying to prevent people from using their first class service. If this is the aim then it simply strengthens their claim to remove the universal obligation as letter volumes will fall even further than they currently have. Perhaps this is their strategy.

This is a huge shame, as there’s nothing quite like the joy of receiving a letter and in our house, we definitely get more than the average household total of four letters a week.

The good news in all this is that the price of a second-class stamp remains the same, so to make sure we don’t lose this vital service, buy stamps and use them sending people letters!

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Standard letters will still be able to be sent second class at 75p, but large letters will be increasing from £1.15 to £1.55, a whopping 34.5% rise. Funny, that wasn’t highlighted anywhere in the press release.

We have all seemingly become so inured to the inevitable price rises in everything we buy that have forgotten that Royal Mail normally only raises their prices once a year, yet this is the second one in six months. In doing so, they have effectively admitted that they don’t want people to use the first-class service, by pricing it so far apart from the second-class service. No wonder, as the current first-class service is nothing of the sort and in most cases, indistinguishable from the second-class service. When there is no guarantee of next-day delivery, why would you pay almost twice to price for the service?

Anywhere you look online there are stories from individuals who have missed hospital appointments, received late birthday cards, and raised disputes with online sellers for non-delivery, all because Royal Mail cannot provide the next-day delivery service promised by the first-class service. Throughout all of this, they simply point to dropping mail volumes, increased costs, and the onerous restrictions of the Universal Service Obligation. Fine, but where are the solutions?

The reality is that the UK postal system is in disarray and raising stamp prices in nothing short of rearranging the deckchairs whilst the boat sinks. As Royal Mail is still effectively hamstrung by Government obligations, whilst being a privately owned business, the recipe for disaster is already in place. How long before the entire system for delivering mail reaches a crisis point and someone actually does something to sort this?

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