The UK's Royal Mail has been fined £10.5m ($13.3m) for late mail delivery, media regulator Ofcom said.
It found that in the past fiscal year (ending in March) the company delivered 74.7% of first-class mail and 92.7% of second-class mail on time. Royal Mail is required to deliver at least 93% of first-class mail within one working day and at least 98.5% of second-class mail within three working days.
This is the second fine since the end of the pandemic. The postal service cited "difficult financial circumstances" as the reason for its failure to meet its own targets. Royal Mail's losses for the last financial year amounted to 348 million pounds.
The regulator believes that the company needs to “significantly improve“ its mail delivery speed and calls the steps taken in this area “insufficient and ineffective“.
Despite the fact that the situation this year has improved slightly compared to 2022/2023, the fine turned out to be higher than that in 2023, updating the anti-record. The last time the company was charged 5.6 million pounds.