BRITAIN'S mail regulator has ruled out scrapping postal deliveries on Saturdays, despite the Royal Mail plunging into the red for the first time.
Speculation had been growing that the Postal Services Commission was set to respond to the company's financial difficulties by recommending that deliveries be reduced to five days a week, sparking an angry backlash from mail users, unions, politician
s, businesses and watchdog groups.
But Postcomm, the independent body that regulates the postal service for the Government, insisted there was no question of Saturday deliveries being abandoned.
A spokesman told Scotland on Sunday last night: "I can say categorically, robustly and definitively that this is not going to happen. There is absolutely no truth in the suggestion we are going to recommend a reduction in service."
Postcomm will, however, reveal recommendations in the next 10 days on the future of the service, including securing 'universal service', the promise to deliver letters to each of the 28 million addresses in Britain for the same price.
Royal Mail revealed last week that its postal service made a £100m loss in the year to March. The average daily mailbag shrunk from 83 million letters in 2006-07 to 80 million in the year to March – the second consecutive fall and a far bigger decline than the one million figure a year earlier.
As part of attempts to cut costs, the mail service has already stopped twice-daily deliveries and post office mailboxes are no longer emptied on a Sunday. The downturn has been blamed on the rise of the internet, with people increasingly using e-mail to communicate and paying bills online.
Royal Mail said it welcomed a recommendation that universal service should continue. A spokesman said: "Royal Mail is dismayed by the idea of adverse changes and reducing our first-class quality of service targets."
Business leaders said cuts had gone far enough. David Frost, chairman of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: "We can't allow any further fall in service. Otherwise businesses will get round using Royal Mail by using electronic communications or by using rival operators."
The full article contains 354 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
