Postal rates
A standard first-class stamp in UK costs £1.80, up 10p from April 7th, 2026.
A second-class stamp is £0.91, just over half the price of a first-class stamp. It increased by 4p in April.
Those who still send letters usually opt for second-class postage. It’s noticeably cheaper, and the letters often arrive at the same time as correspondence with first-class stamps. Remoter areas will often experience significant delays, even with first-class postage.
At present the Post Office site states that second-class letters will arrive within three business days, and a first-class letter will be delivered by the next working day, including Saturdays.
Today, a flyer dropped through our letter box, in bright red Royal Mail livery. It stated, '2nd class mail is changing.’ The changes are intended ‘to deliver a better all-round service.’ Considering how customers send mail, Royal Mail aims ‘to offer a more reliable and sustainable service.’
Letters and cards carrying second-class stamps will be delivered every other day, and if one of the days is a Saturday, the letter or card will be delivered within three weekdays. So, something posted before collection on a Friday may not reach the recipient until the following Tuesday.
First-class mail will continue to be delivered six days a week. Mail is never delivered on a Sunday, though parcels can be delivered ‘up to’ seven days a week.
Is this change intended to encourage more people to buy first-class stamps, so that cards can be expected to arrive for the important date they’ve been sent for? I suggest that fewer people will bother to send anything by surface mail.
The peak of 20 billion letters in 2004-2005 has dropped to 6.6 billion and is forecast to drop to 4 billion in the next few years.
The decline is blamed on the growing dependence on digital communication. This has been reflected worldwide. At the same time, parcel deliveries have increased markedly.
Are we witnessing the demise of the personal letter or card? Will future generations be unable to read letters sent by their forebears? Will anyone be able to read another person’s handwriting?
I know of children already who cannot read cursive script. This is not so surprising, since, unless we have been specially taught, it is difficult for most people to read journals and notes written by people in the 16th century. Queen Victoria’s handwriting from the nineteenth century was difficult to decipher.
It would be disappointing if future historians and biographers in their research had nothing more exciting to sift through than emails and text messages.
I haven't mailed anything in a long time. I pay my bills online. I no longer mail packages either. It's expensive, and the service is terrible.
ReplyDeleteThat is too bad that today's children are not taught cursive - It's the same here. Whatever happened to reading, writing, and arithmetic?
The 'three Rs' long ago had to find their place in a myriad other subjects, so now children are taught a very little about a great many things.
DeleteA book of stamps lasts us a lot longer than it used to.
ReplyDeleteHa ha! Likewise, and special Christmas stamps are used all year round . . .
DeleteI know that to mail a Christmas package the size of a shoebox from here to there is about $100. So much cheaper the other way.
ReplyDeleteIt's a great deterrent.
DeleteI have never heard of first class and second class stamps. Here we have regular stamps, concession stamps for pensioners and you have to apply for that card and show proof, the other type of stamps is overseas mail. We never get weekend deliveries and weekday deliveries are not everyday anymore, some weeks we seem to have three alternate days, some weeks only two days, unless I just don't see or hear the postie sometimes so think he doesn't come around. Things bought online are mostly sent by one or other of a courier type service and can arrive any day, even Sunday.
ReplyDeleteI think our postal service is heading in the same direction as yours.
DeleteHave to smile when reading old books with post deliveries 4 times a day in London.
ReplyDeleteI used to collect stamps when I was younger, now never see any except the Christmas ones each year.
It's rare to see stamps these days and cause for excitement.
ReplyDeleteWe get very little mail, birthday and christmas wishes are often sent online, which is a shame, I always looked forward to cards dropping through the letter box. Our world is becoming very bland, too many straight lines and minimalist designs, modern design has lost so much.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a shame, too - another tradition falling away. I agree about modern design, too; it's often unimaginative.
DeleteAs Poppypatchwork says too many straight lines....... Writing is disappearing as also are maps. The trouble with putting all one's eggs in the same basket?? Must admit though the Royal Mail is excellent with my parcels.
ReplyDeleteMaps and charts are fascinating works of art.
ReplyDeleteI can't see that increasing the use of first class postage. It wouldn't work for me any way. It's sad that some people can't read cursive. I was sending a card to a young girl the other day and started to write a message. Then I thought she might not be able to read it so I printed it instead.
ReplyDeleteI miss cards and letters, too. Very few people of my acquaintance send them now.
DeleteI actually miss getting mail. I'm not talking about the monthly bills, I'm talking about letters from family and friends. Birthday cards and Christmas cards. Everything is done through email or now even worse just a short text. Our postage rates here getting very high and I have to say that the post office does not do a good job of seeing to it that the males delivered at all.
ReplyDeleteOur posties are good, out walking hours every day with heavy bags. The bags these days seem to carry an awful lot of advertising material - brochures and flyers that usually go straight in the bin.
ReplyDeleteThose who still send letters , that must include me. I did stil send snail mail despite there is internet connection like chatroom and email. Sending letter through a snail mail with stamp is remain forever especially for some reasons such as limited access to the internet in remote areas like in Indonesia.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThere must be a few places still that cannot rely on internet.
DeleteThe family app on the phone has replaced letters, it is lovely to see photos. I still send birthday cards, with £5 tucked inside for the great nieces and nephews. I send them 2nd class in plenty of time, usually the start of the month, because I am getting forgetful.
ReplyDeleteYou're well-organised. Dates creep up on me and I don't realise until it's almost too late, despite notes and reminders!
DeleteYour comment about children not being able to read handwriting reminded me of a recent item about children sitting exams who could not tell the time on the conventional analogue wall clocks - they only knew the digital displays on their phones and tablets. It truly is a different country now!
ReplyDeleteThere's no excuse for children not being able to read analogue clockfaces - it's not as though they've been banned. Clocks on public buildings are very obvious.
DeleteThe ability to use an analogue clock has been lost, like using coins, giving change, and mental arithmetic. The students are not allowed to wear a watch, nor were the invigilators allowed to tell them how long was left. Surely someone should put digital clocks in exam rooms.
DeleteThat is madness, on all counts.
DeleteThat flyer dropped into our letter box yesterday too.
ReplyDeleteShame isn’t it about cards and letters……..a slow but inevitable decline.
Alison in Devon x
It is a sad decline and one we may regret.
DeleteMost of my mail these days is destined straight for the recycle. I'm amused when people complain kids aren't taught cursive writing. I'm in my late eighties and we weren't taught it either!
ReplyDeleteI'm astonished you weren't taught handwriting, It was a staple of most classrooms. Of course, there was no National Curriculum until 1988 so schools could pretty much please themselves what they taught.
DeleteFrom Google:
"In the late 19th and early 20th century, the heavily looped "Copperplate" was standard. By the late 1930s, the UK Department of Admiralty had developed a simplified "Chancery Italic" that became a very popular teaching script in British schools."
Some countries have already abandoned postal service and others are contemplating it. Canada Post routinely loses more money than I can count, each year, with no end in sight. Door-to-door delivery is being abandoned totally in those areas that still receive it, in favour of community mailboxes (which we have had for years). The postal workers union is quite militant and seems bent on self destruction. The only time I use the post office these days is to send a package, generally overseas, and the cost of the postage nearly always exceeds the value of the contents. Recently, I mailed a book to a friend in Australia. The book cost $39.00, the postage was $49.00. I think we are witnessing the demise of postal services as we have know them.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're right. Businesses can send parcels postage-free - it's a strange world.
DeleteStamps. Rotary phones. Foldable maps. CD players. So many things going out of fashion!
ReplyDeleteHuge opportunities for 'collectors' to cash in on the antiques market . . .
DeleteYou and I may take the view about the written word, against texts and email. We have even moved on from email, with only boring stuffs arriving by email now. My mother's handwriting was very nice, but her grandchildren, now in their thirties, struggled to read her writing. My mother's handwriting was perfectly legible to me.
ReplyDeleteI don't know when our mail arrives. I've gone for two weeks without mail, with it now all arriving via a digital means in whatever manner.
It's easy to overlook digital communications, particularly for important appointments. 😧
DeleteI must check the ease of readability of the younger members of my family.
I'm sure there's a lot less mail being delivered everywhere because of how digitized everything is now.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right.
DeleteI couldn't tell you the last time I mailed a letter or anything requiring a stamp. I think it may have been my passport application, about six months ago!
ReplyDeleteI had to use a Christmas stamp on something the other day!
DeleteMost of our business these days is conducted online, including paying bills, so interactions with the post office personnel are rare. Yet we receive mail delivery every day, except Sunday, by postal workers. And if there is a package to be delivered, they sometimes even bring it to us on Sunday. Our mail consists primarily of bills or advertising flyers which my husband, who collects the mail and also pays the bills, doesn't pass along unless it is actually addressed to me. My impression of our postal workers is that they work hard and strive to "get it right" and I appreciate that as a former civil servant myself.
ReplyDeleteThat's so encouraging to hear. Our posties work hard, too, in all weathers. I'm sure they must be worrying about their future.
DeleteIt is the same here too. My neices and nephews were not taught cursive in school. Nor were my grandkids. My brothers and son all got tutors to teach the kids.
ReplyDeleteI know some of my grandchildren have been taught cursive - one in particular used to practise with me.
DeletePostage costs are just too expensive. Now when I send cards to my sisters I order them from Funky Pigeon, great way to share photos and I only have to pay for UK postage and not the international shipping. I've been doing the same with the calendars I create for my sisters. The last time I sent one from the US they wanted over 20 pound to send!!!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds rather like Moonpig - very helpful when people live far away from each other.
DeleteI got that same flyer today. It struck me that unless you post anything second -class from Monday to Wednesday, it'll take almost a week to get to its destination.
ReplyDeleteMaybe surface mail will be phased out altogether soon.
DeleteIt's very similar here in Sweden. We don't have 2nd class stamps for private letters, though. The cost for a stamp up to 50g now is 22 SEK (currently ~£1.7). For abroad, twice that. One advantage though is that our stamps nowadays are "forever" ones - and personally I have quite a lot of older ones left. We've had several years of letters only being delivered every second weekday (one week Mo-We-Fri, next week Tue-Thu) - and that seems to be about to be changed to every third day now. Back in my youth, before the days of the internet, I wrote lots of long letters - and postcards. Nowadays, still a few postcards and occasional letters to old penfriends. And I still send quite a few Christmas cards - even if not as many as I used to. But most "keeping in touch" communication now has undeniably moved to emails, Facebook and blogging. Partly for the convenience - but not least for the *in*convenience and rising costs of present day postal services...
ReplyDeleteIt is the long, sad demise of personal correspondence, I fear.
ReplyDeleteOur first-class mail is 82 cents (£0.62) at the moment. Our postal service is in big trouble with a $9 billion net loss in fiscal year 2025. Sadly it doesn't take a crystal ball to see where this is going; i.e. the way of the dinosaurs.
ReplyDeleteI cannot see the blandness and impersonality of digital correspondence being an attractive alternative to the intimacy of a handwritten letter or card, but I think you're right - we're seeing the dying days of postal service.
DeleteI read somewhere that cirsive will be gone in about 15 years. By the time I expe t to shiffle off this coil anything I write will be unreadable to most of the population.
ReplyDeleteThere's so much personality and character in cursive script - that will all be lost. Never mind, I'm sure AI will compensate. 😉
DeleteWe have repeatedly been told that the number of people using the postal service to send ordinary mail has been declining. The Royal Mail seems to think the answer to this is to keep putting the price of stamps up. If a supermarket wants to sell more tins of baked beans it puts them on sale. It's not rocket science.
ReplyDeleteThere are still many people who cannot use digital devices, for a number of reasons. It does them no favours to raise postal rates ever higher.
DeleteWe only have one class. It seems to me that it is third class in effect.
ReplyDeleteOh, dear! 😧
DeleteOur postage is going up on July 7th... trying to purchase as many forever stamps as I can before the price change.
ReplyDeleteWe no longer have forever stamps . . . 😣
DeleteAtlantic magazine had an article by an American professor who
ReplyDeletesaid his students wrote everything using their pads and smartphones.
Handwriting was a struggle for them, and they read even impeccable
cursive with difficulty. Do young writers carry pencils & notebooks ?
Is it really effective progress to encourage one form of communication and forget older, traditional methods? There is room for more than one method, surely.
DeleteOlá!
ReplyDeletePassando hoje aqui para conhecer
seu espaço, depois virei com calma;
mas ja estou seguindo e ou amar receber
sua visita no meu Espelhando.
Sobre o tema da publicação, posso dizer que
aqui no Brasil, até 2 governos passados, nós tivemos
uma ótima política para enviar nossas comreespondencias
e nossos livros de um lugar para outro desde que dentro
do país. Infelizmente conseguiram estragar o que
nos beneficiava e hj o preço pra mandar qualquer coisa
para perto ou longe é algo exorbitante.
Mas em fim...
Adorei vir aqui hoje.
Bjins
CatiahôAlc.
Hello, and thank you for your visit.
DeleteIt seems that the postal system is breaking down worldwide. Is everything driven by politicians wishing to make as much money as possible, without thought for the consequences?
When posting cards and letters these days I only use second class mail.
ReplyDeleteAll the best Jan
So do I. I always used to use first class for Christmas cards - not for the last couple of years!
DeletePerhaps the greater loss is not the letter itself, but the tangible human presence it carries
ReplyDeleteI think you're right. Our world is growing increasingly impersonal.
Delete