This communication provides an update regarding how, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are dealing with contract monitoring for National Price Plan One, Averaged Price Plan Two and Regional Price Plan customers for the 2020/21 financial year.

When you received your Q1 price plan monitoring report, we outlined our proposed approach moving forward for dealing with price plan surcharges in 2020/21. We explained that we fully appreciated that Covid-19 has caused disruption across the whole mail industry and that it may have had an adverse impact on customers’ ability to meet their price plan profile requirements during Q1 of 2020/21.  We said at the time that we were therefore intending to review the Q1 data for 2020/21, and if we found that the national fall to earth had become less urban, or had disproportionately impacted specific SSCs, then we would consider solely using Q2 to Q4 fall to earth data to determine customers’ 12-month profile.

We have now completed the review of the Q1 price plan profiles and the results from this analysis show that, compared to the baseline profile, the overall/cumulative profile averaged out across all customers looks similar. However, we appreciate this may not be a fair reflection of the impact of Covid-19 on individual customers. 

We have decided that the most appropriate solution is to disregard Q1 when calculating Profile Surcharges, and (for the purposes of 2020/21 only) to base them instead only on data we consider to be sufficiently robust, which at this time we expect to be the Q2 to Q4 figures.

To effect this, we must make a formal change to the Access Letters Contract under Clause 13.2.1. Contract change notice (number 064), which you can find on our Contracts page, effects the change from 31 March 2021.

Price plan profile surcharges for the remainder of 2020/21

We fully appreciate that Covid-19 is continuing to cause disruption across the whole mail industry and may have an adverse impact on customers’ ability to meet their price plan profile requirements during the remainder of 2020/21. As we have done for Q1, we are continuing to review customer volumes during the affected period, to assess any adverse implications Covid-19 may be having on your ability to meet the profile commitments, and we will let you know at the earliest opportunity what the steps are we are taking to address this.

In the meantime, if you have any questions regarding this, please contact your Account Director.