Postcomm publishes updated guidelines on exceptions to the universal postal service

Postcomm, the independent regulator for postal services, has published its updated guidelines which define the limited geographical conditions or other exceptional circumstances in which Royal Mail is exempt from its universal service obligation to deliver mail once every working day to every address in the United Kingdom.

The guidelines have been formulated following a consultation that invited views on all areas of the current policy, including a number of amendments proposed by Postcomm to take into account changing circumstances since the guidelines first came into effect in April 2003.

The main change to existing policy is:

Royal Mail’s Delivery Sector Manager (or equivalent) will be responsible for assessing and issuing a decision for a customer’s initial appeal against Royal Mail’s decision to except an address from the universal service obligation.
The current guidelines are due to expire on 30 June 2007; the updated rules will come into effect on 1 July 2007.

All addresses excepted from Royal Mail’s universal delivery service in 2005 were notified of this consultation as Postcomm wanted to use this review to assess whether the limited number of appeal cases it had received since April 2003 was a true reflection of postal users’ satisfaction with the current policy.

An initial assessment carried out by Postcomm, Postwatch and Royal Mail indicated that the guidelines have worked well in practice, in particular the total number of exceptions in the UK was reduced from 4,323 to 2,697 immediately after the publication of Postcomm’s policy. The number of long term health and safety exception cases was also lower in 2006 than in 2003 following the implementation of the policy.

Although there has been a small increase in the number of difficulty of access exceptions during the same period, there was no corresponding increase in appeal cases to Postcomm and it has dealt with only eight appeal cases whilst Postwatch and Royal Mail have managed to settle at least seven other cases at earlier stages of the appeals process.

Notes for editors

The three month consultation period ended on 8 November 2006.

Postcomm has given careful consideration to the representations received from respondents to the consultation. The responses have been helpful to Postcomm in deciding which areas of the current policy and guidelines needed to be modified or clarified.

In the consultation document, Postcomm assessed the impact of the current policy, taking into account the number of excepted addresses and appeals since it came into effect in April 2003.