Royal Mail is set to be allowed to deliver second-class letters on alternate weekdays and to stop Saturday deliveries under proposals to shake up postal service rules announced by the industry regulator.Ofcom said cutting the deliveries to every other weekday with a price cap on second-class stamps, while maintaining first-class letters six days a week, would still meet the public’s needs.Its provisional recommendations also included cutting delivery targets for first-class mail from 93% to 90% arriving the next day, and for second-class mail from 98.5% to 95% within three days.Ofcom’s consultation on the proposed changes will run until 10 April, and it expects to publish its decision in the summer.

The proposals come after pressure from the company on the regulator to overhaul the universal service obligation, the remit held by Royal Mail to deliver nationwide at one price six days a week.Last year Royal Mail’s owner, International Distributions Services, called for the daily Monday-to-Saturday second-class service to be pared back to “every other weekday”.Ofcom said it estimated the changes would enable Royal Mail to save between £250m and £425m each year, at a time when the £3.6bn takeover of IDS by the Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group nears completion.Royal Mail has struggled to make deliveries on time in recent years, and the regulator said it had been fined more than £16m for missed delivery targets over the previous 18 months.

Ofcom told the company that it needed to invest in its network, become more efficient and improve service levels even as people send fewer letters.Two decades ago, Royal Mail delivered 20bn letters a year, the regulator said, but this has plummeted to 6.6bn a year, and the company expects it to slide further to 4bn annually in the coming years.However, people are sending more packages, and Royal Mail said earlier this month that increase in parcel deliveries over the Christmas period had put it on track to return to annual profit.Ofcom said its research showed that most letters were not urgent, and that affordability and reliability were now more important to consumers than the speed of delivery.

Natalie Black, Ofcom’s group director for networks and communications, said: “We’re safeguarding what matters most to people – first-class mail six days a week at the same price throughout the UK, and a price cap on second-class stamps.”A Downing Street spokesperson said: “I would remind you that this is the start of a 10-week consultation, it would be wrong to pre-empt its conclusion.“But we’re clear that a reliable and affordable universal postal service is crucial to the UK.It must work for customers, workers and businesses that help drive growth across the country.”EP Group’s takeover is expected to be completed by the end of March, after it was approved by the UK government last month.

Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionEmma Gilthorpe, Royal Mail’s chief executive, said: “Ofcom has recognised the urgent need for change so that the future of the universal service can be protected for all … Reform is crucial to support a modern, sustainable, and reliable postal service for our customers, our company and our people.”The plans to cut delivery days come after Royal Mail increased the cost of a first-class stamp five times in less than three years, with the most recent rise last October taking the price to £1.65, almost double the cost in March 2022.The Post Office, which was separated from Royal Mail in 2012 before the privatisation of the delivery service, criticised the proposed changes and said its operators and customers, particularly those who are vulnerable, did not want to see services reduced.“The proposals announced today put more pressure on postmasters who are already facing tough trading conditions,” a Post Office spokesperson said.

The reduction in second-class letter deliveries will be trialled by Royal Mail in 37 of its 1,200 deliveries, starting in February,It said the pilot would allow it to check the changes ran smoothly but added it would only implement the new delivery model if the regulator’s proposals came into force,The Communication Workers Union, which represents postal workers, described the trial as a “real test”,The union, which ended a long-running industrial dispute over pay and conditions with the company in 2023, said it would support the trial, provided it resulted in “a significant improvement in service reliability for customers, as well as terms and conditions for postal workers being improved”, including more Saturdays off work and long-term job security,It came as the UK’s Greeting Card Association has launched a petition to force wider parliamentary scrutiny of the proposed service changes.

It criticised Royal Mail’s pilot scheme, which it said would affect second-class post for more than a million households and small businesses, prior to any formal changes to the postal service.