South: SMEs hit by £2,000 stamp price hikes

Britain’s small businesses could be paying on average almost £2,000 a year to post their mail after record stamp price hikes by Royal Mail, according to figures from postal experts The Mailing Room. This equates to an extra £546 a year for the average SME, at a time when the double-dip recession is already pushing the country’s entrepreneurs to the limit.

Royal Mail announced its new stamp tariff in March, after the regulator Ofcom lifted some of its price controls.  From April 30, the cost of a first-class stamp was raised from 46p to 60p, and the price of a second-class stamp was up from 36p to 50p. To post large letters increased from 75p to 90p for first-class, and from 58p to 69p for second-class.

George Bevan, managing director at The Mailing Room, said: “We have been expecting these huge price rises for almost two years, as Royal Mail has been increasingly deregulating and streamlining its operations to make it a more attractive proposition for privatisation. The increase in stamp prices meets Royal Mail’s long term objectives, however it will not sit so comfortably with the many thousand small business owners who rely on the postal service to communicate with their customers.”

For some SMEs though, it may not be all bad news. Bevan added: “Royal Mail has kept the prices for their franked mail competitively low in a bid to encourage business customers to pre-pay for their postage. The franking price for a first-class letter is 44p, and only 31p for a second-class letter. In our experience, a business which sends just six letters a day using stamps would save money with a franking machine. In fact, we estimate that 250,000 UK businesses could benefit from switching from stamps to franking.”

Resources: The Mailing Room website