In This Article:
Three months ago, the Danish postal service celebrated its 400th birthday – describing itself as a “backbone of society” and lauding its “great service for the oldest postal service in Scandinavia”.
But three months is a long time. On Thursday, Danes awoke to the news that its state-run postal service, PostNord, would end all letter deliveries by the end of the year.
Despite Danes sending more than 100 million letters last year, with 271,000 being reliant on physical mail to complete day-to-day activities, the postal service said it would deliver its last letter on December 30 and start removing its 1,500 letter boxes as early as June.
PostNord cited a 90pc decline in letter volumes since the turn of the century as the reason for its abrupt decision.
With Royal Mail expecting letter volumes to be down to 80pc of their peak within the next four years, and on Friday announcing a further rise in the price of stamps, is the writing on the wall for Britain’s beleaguered postal service as well?
It certainly makes for worrying viewing when you look at the steps the Danes took in advance of scrapping letter deliveries. The postal service raised the price of stamps, so that it costs £2.82 to send a letter in Denmark, and similarly made job cuts to try and stem its losses.
It repeatedly warned that letter volumes were declining and that it needed to innovate while lobbying the Danish government to water down its equivalent of the Universal Service Obligation (USO).
In 2023, it was successful, and its government agreed that it would no longer have to deliver mail to all parts of Denmark.
Under its USO, Royal Mail must deliver letters six days a week to all 32 million addresses in Britain for the price of a stamp, but it has spent the past four years lobbying to have this commitment reduced.
It looks set to be successful with Ofcom, its regulator, proposing Royal Mail should only deliver second-class letters every other weekday and not on Saturdays, claiming this would save between £250m and £450m annually.
And while the price of a stamp may not have reached Danish levels, it has risen by almost 75pc in two years with a first-class stamp in March 2023 costing 95p and today being £1.65.
From April 7, stamp prices will increase further with a first-class stamp costing £1.70 and a second-class stamp costing 87p. It represents the fifth increase for first-class stamps since 2022.
Dinah Johnson, founder of The Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society, said she feared Royal Mail was following a similar path to the Danish postal service.