You will be aware that various regions of the UK were impacted by adverse weather throughout last week.   On Thursday 9 March 2023, the Met Office issued an amber weather warning indicating that snow and ice would be expected across multiple regions in the UK from Thursday 9 March until Sunday 12 March 2023.  Additionally, the UK Health Security Agency placed all regions of England under a level 3 cold weather alert from Monday 6 March until Monday 13 March 2023.  Whilst the Met Office subsequently downgraded its weather warning to a yellow weather warning on Friday 10 March, multiple regions continued to experience further snow and icy conditions, which caused travel and other disruption beyond this date. 

The reason I wanted to write to you about this now is that this severe weather situation constitutes a Disruptive Event under the Access Letters Contract (ALC) and Wholesale Parcels Contract (WPC), which will have impacted Royal Mail’s ability to meet some of its obligations to you in our ALC and WPC.

In particular, travel disruption (i.e. adverse driving and walking conditions) affected our team in certain localities, and we anticipate that this will have negatively impacted our ability to deliver all Mailing Items in line with the timescales specified in the ALC (i.e. D+2 for standard letters and D+5 for Economy mail) and the WPC (i.e. D+2 for parcels).

We acknowledge that weather conditions can improve or deteriorate quickly, so we undertake risk assessments throughout the day to ensure we are doing all we can to continue providing our services, whilst also ensuring our people’s health and safety is put first. 

We are continuing to assess the impact of the adverse weather conditions experienced and will update you further on this when we can.