Shipment Progress

How is this calculated?

LitePost predicts delivery using posting time, postbox collection schedules, source and destination postcodes, day of week, seasonal trends, bank holidays, route performance, and historical Royal Mail delivery patterns. Predictions continuously improve as more delivery data becomes available.

Royal Mail plays a vital role in connecting the nation through its one-price-goes-anywhere service. For many years, the Universal Service Obligation has required us to collect and deliver letters to every UK address six days a week. Following an extensive consultation process involving many stakeholders, Ofcom announced reforms to the Universal Service in July 2025. Letters remain an important means of keeping us connected, but fewer are being sent these days. These changes to the Universal Service will help us deliver a more reliable and sustainable service for you in the future. You can read more about the changes, and what they’ll mean for you, below.

What’s changing – and what’s staying the same

What’s changing:

• 2nd Class and other non-1st Class letters will be delivered every other weekday (Monday to Friday). We aim to deliver 2nd Class mail within three weekdays.
• Standard bulk business letters (used for items like bills and statements) will move to a three day delivery aim, aligned with 2nd Class.
• New reliability targets for 1st and 2nd Class services will be introduced.

Universal Service reform is critical to enabling a step change in the quality of service we provide to you. We have now reached agreement with the Communication Workers Union (CWU) on the deployment of reform, subject to a CWU members’ ballot, which will take place shortly. The rollout of the new delivery model has begun and will be undertaken on a phased basis over five to six months across c.1,200 delivery offices. This is a significant reform that will be introduced gradually over time, with implementation expected to be complete by December 2026. We will continue to keep you informed as our plans develop and thank you for your continued patience while we work to secure a more reliable and sustainable service for the future.

2nd Class Deliveries — example schedule

Day of posting	New delivery‑due day
Monday	Thursday
Tuesday	Friday
Wednesday	Monday
Thursday	Tuesday
Friday	Wednesday
Saturday	Thursday
Sunday	Thursday

What’s staying the same

• One-price-goes-anywhere service across the UK.
• 1st Class letters delivered six days a week (Monday to Saturday).
• Choice of 1st and 2nd Class for letters and parcels.
• Parcels delivered up to seven days a week.