AT THE Church Times, we share subscribers’ frustrations when their copies arrive late. Copies are sent out firstclass on Thursdays, and yet last 12 months’s reader survey suggested that only 80 per cent reach subscribers on Fridays or Saturdays.
We are depending on the Royal Mail to deliver copies to subscribers promptly, and it’s deeply disappointing that it has failed to fulfill its delivery targets, for which it was fined £5.6 million last November by the regulator, Ofcom.
It is incredibly worrying, due to this fact, that Ofcom is considering suggestions that the Royal Mail needs to be allowed to cut back the variety of delivery days from six to 5 — and even only three. This would require the Government and Parliament to vary primary laws, Ofcom says.
Reducing the variety of delivery days can be to the detriment of our subscribers, and would present a serious threat to the Church Times’s business model. We urge Ofcom to take care of — and, indeed, improve — next-day delivery services six days per week, and we trust that our valued subscribers would need the identical.
Ofcom is consulting widely on the longer term of the universal postal service. We ask our readers to make their voices heard here. The consultation ends at 5 p.m. on Wednesday 3 April.
