On 25 April 2022 following feedback from the industry, we opened up a trial enabling customers to submit their reforecast up to 20:00 on each Working Day, as opposed to the prevailing cut-off time of 16:00. The purpose of the trial was to assess whether the additional window of time supports customers in preparing a more accurate reforecast, and consequently Royal Mail to adjust its operational resource the evening before handover of mail.

Take up to participate in the trial was not as high as we would have liked, however, whilst we did see some improvements in forecast accuracy from the 20:00 reforecasts for those customers who did take part, the improvements are not material enough to warrant rolling out the trial on a permanent basis.

Therefore, we have decided that the trial will come to an end on 31 October 2023.

We will continue to work with the industry to seek out ways to improve the forecasting requirements for the benefit of the mail supply chain, and would like to thank the participants for their support in this particular aspect