ROYAL MAIL missed its recently lowered delivery targets, insisting today that it was making progress towards meeting them by next spring.

The group said that it delivered 85 per cent of first-class deliveries the next day and 91.4 per cent of second-class mail within three working days during the first quarter of the year.

Ofcom’s targets for these are 90 and 95 per cent respectively since they were lowered from 93 and 98.5 per cent in April.

The watchdog lowered its targets as part of universal service reforms allowing second-class letters to be delivered on alternate weekdays.

Royal Mail, whose owner International Distribution Services was bought last year by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, expects to complete the rollout of the new model across all its 1,200 delivery offices by Christmas, after initially being delayed until it had reached agreement with trade unions.

It insisted that it had seen a marked improvement from a year earlier, when first quarter figures showed just 76 per cent of first-class and 89.3 of second-class post arrived on time.

Royal Mail chief operating officer Jamie Stephenson said: “First-class performance is well ahead of where we expected to be at this stage of our improvement plan, while second-class is tracking in line with the plan.”

Tom MacInnes, of Citizens Advice, said: “Despite Ofcom lowering the company’s delivery targets in April, Royal Mail has already claimed it needs until next spring before it can actually meet them.

“This is not good enough and fines for poor service have had little impact.

“We now want to see Ofcom using stamp price caps to ensure Royal Mail can’t go on increasing prices while missing targets.”