Statement published 16 January 2019 (further technical statement published 26 July 2019)
Ofcom is responsible for regulating the UK postal market. In doing so, we incur costs. We published proposals to change the way in which we recover these costs in July 2017. Our March 2018 statement sets out our final decision on the way in which we will recover our costs of regulating the postal sector in future.
Ofcom is also responsible for recovering the costs of consumer advocacy bodies, such as Citizens Advice, in relation to their work in the postal sector. Our July 2017 consultation also included proposals to change the way in which these costs are recovered. We then published revised proposals in our March 2018 reconsultation. Our January 2019 statement sets out our final decision on the way in which we recover consumer advocacy costs in relation to postal services.
Following stakeholder feedback it came to our attention that our policy intentions did not properly align with our regulatory condition implementing our statement (Consumer Protection Condition 1); therefore, in June 2019 we proposed minor modifications to CP1.
In July 2019, we set our final decision in regard to the proposed minor modifications to CP1.
On 5 June 2019, Ofcom published a short, additional consultation on a minor modification to the regulatory conditions covering the recovery of these costs. In this further consultation, which closes on 8 July 2019, we are proposing to amend the relevant regulatory condition to clarify that only turnover relating to domestic services, and not international letters and parcels, should be included when calculating relevant turnover, in line with our original policy intention. The consultation can be found below.
On 29 March 2018, we published a document entitled ‘Statement and further consultation: Recovering postal regulation and consumer advocacy costs’. As a result of our statement, and using our legal powers under Schedule 8 of the 2011 Postal Services Act, we issued a General Demand for Information (Annex 6, dated 29 March 2018) for the purpose of ascertaining who is liable to pay charges towards Ofcom’s administrative costs. The date for liable relevant postal operators to submit their relevant turnover was stated as “the last working day of May”. We have now updated this date, bringing it forward to “the last working day of October”. This comes into force with immediate effect in relation to the 2019/20 charging year (i.e. the period beginning 1 April 2019 and ending with 31 March 2020) and any subsequent charging year (i.e. any subsequent period of 12 months beginning with 1 April).) and replaces the previous GDFI.
On 29 March 2018, we published a document entitled ‘Statement and further consultation: Recovering postal regulation and consumer advocacy costs’. We have noticed that the statutory notification for Ofcom’s proposed modifications of Consumer Protection Condition 1 (as published in Annex 7 to that document) omitted to include the date and signature by a person duly authorised by Ofcom under paragraph 18 of the Schedule to the Office of Communications Act 2002. We have corrected this omission by separately re-publishing the statutory notification in that Annex 7, but without making any other substantive changes to it. For the avoidance of doubt, as that Annex 7 solely relates to our further consultation on the recovery of consumer advocacy costs in the postal sector, this re-published notification has no impact on our decision concerning the recovery of Ofcom’s own administrative costs in the postal sector.
Main documents
Supporting documents
Responses
Contact information
Ofcom
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