Royal Mail Delays Hit London After Bank Holiday: Full List of Affected Areas

Royal Mail has announced service disruptions affecting postcode areas throughout the UK, including London. The announcement follows the firm making "no deliveries or collections" last week due to the Spring Bank Holiday.

Bank Holiday Impact

On Monday, May 25, Royal Mail operations were paused. The company said: "We deliver and collect your mail on most days of the year, including Saturdays. However, we don't usually deliver or collect on public or local holidays." Services recommenced the next day, though as of Monday, June 1, additional delays have emerged in certain regions across the UK. Areas including parts of London are amongst the 14 locations experiencing difficulties.

Reasons for Delays

Royal Mail explained: "We aim to deliver to all addresses we have mail for, six days a week. In a small number of local offices, this may temporarily not be possible due to local issues such as high levels of sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors. In those cases, we will rotate deliveries to minimise the delay to individual customers. We also provide targeted support to those offices to address their challenges and restore our service to the high standard our customers would normally receive."

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"We're sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding." Despite the delays, Royal Mail's air and road network has operated according to schedule over the previous 24 hours.

Previous Penalties and Performance

Royal Mail has come under fire for delayed deliveries and received a £21 million penalty from Ofcom in October. The fine was imposed after the service managed to deliver only 77% of First Class post and 92.5% of Second Class post punctually during the 2024 to 2025 period. First Class Next Day delivery performance is expected to rise to approximately 85% within nine months, before achieving the 90% benchmark established by regulator Ofcom within twelve months. Royal Mail has also pledged to deliver 93% of Second Class letters within three days over a nine-month period, with plans to meet the 95% target by May next year.

Royal Mail acknowledged a "challenging start to the year" while maintaining that performance was on an upward trajectory. By March, Royal Mail reported it was successfully delivering 81.1% of first class mail within one working day and 90.2% of second class mail within three working days.

Chief Operating Officer's Statement

Jamie Stephenson, Royal Mail's chief operating officer, commented: "We're putting significant investment into improving reliability and reaching these new delivery targets, but delivering lasting change across a network of this scale takes time. Universal Service reform is a key part of that, helping us adapt the network to reflect how people send and receive mail today while protecting the one-price-goes-anywhere service for the future. We have a plan to deploy the new delivery model to all delivery offices across the country by the Christmas peak period and have set clear targets for each quarter as changes are introduced across the network. Early performance this year shows we are tracking in line with the plan and moving in the right direction."