Year: 2005

The decision to end the Royal Mail’s 350-year-old monopoly on delivering letters from next January has raised the prospect of rival firms installing different coloured post boxes alongside the traditional red ones.

Customers would then have to choose whether to put their card or letter into a red, yellow or possibly blue pillar box, depending how quickly they wanted it delivered and how much they had paid for a stamp.

But despite callers to radio phone-in programmes today being asked if they would be prepared to ditch the UK’s 115,000 Royal Mail boxes and entrust letters to a private firm, the reality is likely to be much different.

Royal Mail threw its support behind the UK regulator’s decision to open the postal service market to competition in January next year, 15 months ahead of schedule. ‘We’re ready,’ said Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier. ‘We recognise that the regulator is getting on with his job, and welcome faster competition as long as it comes without unfair restrictions on Royal Mail,’ he added. Postcomm’s decision, which was ahead of the original timetable of April 2007, will end Royal Mail’s over 350-year monopoly of the UK market. The decision means that from 2006, licensed companies other than Royal Mail will be able to collect, transport and deliver letters and charge customers for the service. Crozier said what it now wants to find out is how the transition to full competition will be carried out.

‘Royal Mail wants to be able to compete fully and fairly from the start. We’re determined to earn business in the new market so that we can continue to finance the one-price-goes-anywhere universal service – which remains at the heart of what we do. We can only do this if the handcuffs come off,’ he said.

The postal market is to be fully liberalised from the start of next year, more than a year earlier than planned, in an effort to force Royal Mail to improve its customer service. Postcomm, the postal regulator, said yesterday that any licensed company would be allowed to operate in the mail market from January 1 next year. Royal Mail currently has a market share of 99 per cent. The market was to be opened in April 2007, but last September the regulator indicated this would be brought forward. The country’s parcel delivery market is already fully liberalised. Nigel Stapleton, chairman of Postcomm, said that, unlike other market liberalisations, the process was not about bringing prices down as stamps were already cheaper in the UK than in many other countries. “The major change is going to be the service provided by the incumbent operator,” he said. “Royal Mail is already placing more emphasis on quality of service because of competition.” The Communication Workers’ Union called the move “a grave mistake”. The UK should not open its postal market until other European countries did the same, it said.