Royal Mail’s efforts to repackage its logistics problem have arrived too late Martha Gill

Universal mail once connected the country ata flat, affordable price now, as letters fade and parcels boom, rivals take the profits

- Anatomy of Britain

(John Eveson/ Flickr Vision)

Posting a letter was once a luxury. Two hundred years ago, sending two sheets of paper from London to Dublin cost a day’s wage.But 1840 marked a revolution: the founding of the Penny Post. State-run and given a monopoly on letters in return for delivering them cheaply, it would not only democratise letter-writing but also transform the economy. “Letters for the rich, letters for the poor / The shop at the corner, the girl next door,” wrote WH Auden nearly 100 years later in his poem Night Mail.

But “universal” mail systems ~ those with an obligation to deliver to anyone, anywhere, six days a week and for a flat rate - are looking increasingly shaky. Last week the state-run Danish postal service delivered its last letter; the country’s red postboxes will soon be sold off. The US post office, meanwhile, runs up billions in losses. Germany's Deutsche Post has scrapped its next-day airmail service. And Royal Mail — which, like Deutsche Post, has switched from state-run to private but retains a universal obligation - is no exception to the rule.

Christmas is always a time of reckoning, This year, Royal Mail warned customers that there could be delays to 92 postcodes, from Brixton to Dundee. Late Christmas cards have since been confirmed at 47 of these. In October, the service was fined £21m by Ofcom for delivering only three quarters of its first-class post on time — its third fine in three years and the largest yet. In the summer, the obligation to deliver second-class letters was cut to every other day.