Royal Mail has announced that the price of the First Class standard letter will increase by a penny to 64p from the 29 March. At the same time the price of a Second Class stamp will increase by 1p to 55p.

The penny price increase will also apply to First Class Large Letter and Second Class stamps up to 100g.

According to a statement from Royal Mail, the charges are, “necessary to help ensure the sustainability of the Universal Postal Service”. The national postal operator added that it had “carefully considered” the impact of any change on its customers and its own business “before deciding to apply the smallest possible increase in stamped letter prices”.

More information on the Royal Mail prices can be found at www.royalmail.com/prices2016 .

Though the current price increases won’t deter many people from using the postal operator (as previous significant price hikes have) Royal Mail is seeing a decline in traditional post and an increase in parcel deliveries. The slight increases are seen as a means of paying for the relative increase in cost of delivery of a swindling overall postal volumes as economies of scale are impacted.

The company however reported record parcel volumes over Christmas as customers and businesses increasingly used the company for e-commerce parcel deliveries. This gradual change from mail to parcels may well take a number of years as the company seeks to use promotional direct mail to cover the decline in traditional postal volumes. Studies have shown that direct postal mailshots have a greater impact than general advertising, and this may well rescue the postal operator long term.