The Royal Mail is formulation to keep stamp prices this XMas the same as final year for people of "modest" means, the postal group's arch senior manager revealed.
Moya Greene mentioned she realised any enlarge in stamp prices was a complaint for a few families, mainly at Christmas, the busiest time of the year for post.
She told the Business Select Committee that the Royal Mail was formulation a special programme this XMas beneath that the cost of posting letters and cards would be the same as final year for those with medim means.
The Royal Mail is approaching to publicize shortly that stamp prices will way up from the stream 46p for initial category and 36p for second category post.
She told MPs the core business had mislaid 1 billion in 4 years and until really not long ago was money negative, putting the concept service "in peril".
The Royal Mail longed for to keep patron faithfulness together with accomplish a rate of lapse on its products and services in a "very complex" market, she said.
She shielded the stream cost of st amps, adage there were few things any person could purchase for 46p, describing the cost of a initial category stamp as "very high value", with letters being delivered wherever in the UK a day after posting. Ms Greene mentioned no preference had been taken on the future cost of stamps.
The UK has the seventh cheapest initial category service in the European Union and the second lowest second category prices.
Mail volumes have depressed by 25% in the past 5 years, with the every day postbag descending from 84 million things to 59 million. The Royal Mail expects volumes to reject by around 5% a year is to foreseeable future even even though the number of addresses is stepping up – up by two million to 29 million given 2003.
Families outlay an median of 40p a week on postal services, the Royal Mail estimates, homogeneous to 0.1% of median weekly expenditure.