The UK's national postal service, with a history going back to 1516, delivering letters and parcels to homes and businesses across the whole country.
Royal Mail collects, sorts and delivers letters and parcels across the UK. It is the company behind the Universal Service Obligation, which means it must deliver eligible items anywhere in the UK at one fixed price, however far away the address is. Its own website says its postal workers deliver six days a week to 32 million UK homes. It also looks after the UK's post boxes and runs parcel services alongside its letters business. Its sister brand, Parcelforce Worldwide, handles express parcels. Online shopping has changed the work, so the company says it is reshaping its network to compete in the growing parcels market.
Royal Mail traces its origins to 1516, when the Tudor court appointed a Master of the Posts. A royal postal service was opened to the public in 1635, the Post Office Act 1660 set up the General Post Office, and the Uniform Penny Post and the Penny Black stamp arrived in 1840. Parcel Post began in 1883. The company became Royal Mail Group in 2002, was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2013, and its holding company was renamed International Distributions Services in 2022. In 2025 that holding company was bought by EP Group, and the government kept a golden share. We found no formal mission statement. The company's pages talk about "reliability and consistency" and about "connecting companies, customers and communities".
Royal Mail works in every part of the UK, so its footprint is huge. Wikipedia reports 38 mail centres (as at March 2021) grouped into five regions, 1,356 delivery offices (2019 figure) and seven regional distribution centres for large business mailings. The Heathrow Worldwide Distribution Centre in Langley, Berkshire, handles international airmail, and there is an air hub at East Midlands Airport. Royal Mail's site says it has opened two automated Parcel Hubs, in Warrington and Daventry, as part of its parcels strategy.
People are the heart of the business. In 2019, Wikipedia reported about 162,000 permanent postal workers, of whom about 143,000 were based in the UK, plus around 18,000 extra casual workers each November and December for the Christmas rush. Some of the company's own history is about its people: an association for female clerical workers was founded in 1901, and in 2010 Moya Greene became the first woman to lead Royal Mail in its long history. Employees have also been shareholders, according to Royal Mail's site. Sources also describe a long record of industrial disputes, including national strikes in 2022 and 2023.
A business this size needs a very wide mix of jobs. Delivery postmen and postwomen and drivers are the most visible, but mail centres rely on sorting operatives and engineers who look after machines such as the 66 intelligent letter sorting machines reported by Wikipedia. It also needs people in customer service, IT, finance, safety, fleet management and planning. If you like being outdoors or are curious how a whole country's mail is moved every day, there is a lot to explore.
Website: www.royalmail.com
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