company traded as lse rmg industry postal services courier founded 1516 ; 500 years ago 1516 headquarters 100 victoria embankment london ec4y 0hq london united kingdom area served united kingdom worldwide key people peter long chairman moya greene chief executive services letter post parcel service ems delivery freight forwarding third party logistics revenue 9 328 million 2015 1 operating income 218 million 2015 1 net income 431 million 2015 1 number of employees 160 000 2015 1 divisions royal mail parcelforce worldwide subsidiaries general logistics systems website royalmail.com royal mail plc welsh post brenhinol ; scottish gaelic a phuist r oghail is a postal service company in the united kingdom originally established in 1516 . the company s subsidiary royal mail group limited operates the brands royal mail letters and parcelforce worldwide parcels . general logistics systems an international logistics company is a wholly owned subsidiary of royal mail group . the company provides mail collection and delivery services throughout the uk . letters are deposited in a pillar or wall box taken to a post office or collected in bulk from businesses . deliveries are made at least once every day except sundays and bank holidays at uniform charges for all uk destinations . royal mail generally aims to make first class deliveries the next business day throughout the nation . 2 for most of its history royal mail has been a public service operating as a government department or public corporation . however following the postal services act 2011 3 4 a majority of the shares in royal mail were floated on the london stock exchange in 2013 . the uk government initially retained a 30 % stake in royal mail 5 however it sold its remaining shares in 2015 ending 499 years of public ownership . 6 contents 1 history 1.1 uniform penny postage 1.2 pillar boxes 1.3 corporatisation 1.4 modernisation 1.5 privatisation 1.6 post privatisation 2 services 2.1 universal service 2.2 special delivery 2.3 business services 2.4 prohibited goods 3 staffing 3.1 penny post credit union 4 regulation 5 operations 6 fleet 7 british overseas territories and crown dependencies 8 see also 9 references 10 external links history edit see also general post office the louth london royal mail by charles cooper henderson 1820 edinburgh and london royal mail by jacques laurent agasse lower edmonton royal mail sorting office in london the royal mail can trace its history back to 1516 when henry viii established a master of the posts 7 a position that was renamed postmaster general in 1710 . 8 upon his accession to the throne of england at the union of the crowns in 1603 james vi and i moved his court to london . one of his first acts from london was to establish the royal postal service between london and edinburgh in an attempt to retain control over the scottish privy council . 9 the royal mail service was first made available to the public by charles i on 31 july 1635 with postage being paid by the recipient . the monopoly was farmed out to thomas witherings . 10 in the 1640s parliament removed the monopoly from witherings and during the civil war and first commonwealth the parliamentary postal service was run at great profit for himself by edmund prideaux a prominent parliamentarian and lawyer who rose to be attorney general . 11 to keep his monopoly in those troubled times prideaux improved efficiency and used both legal impediments and illegal methods . 11 12 in 1653 parliament set aside all previous grants for postal services and contracts were let for the inland and foreign mails to john manley . 11 manley was given a monopoly on the postal service which was effectively enforced by protector oliver cromwell s government and thanks to the improvements necessitated by the war manley ran a much improved post office service . in july 1655 the post office was put under the direct government control of john thurloe a secretary of state and best known to history as cromwell s spymaster general . previous english governments had tried to prevent conspirators communicating thurloe preferred to deliver their post having surreptitiously read it . as the protectorate claimed to govern all of great britain and ireland under one unified government on 9 june 1657 the second protectorate parliament which included scottish and irish mps passed the act for settling the postage in england scotland and ireland that created one monopoly post office for the whole territory of the commonwealth . 12 13 the first postmaster general was appointed in 1661 and a seal was first fixed to the mail . 14 at the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 all the ordinances and acts passed by parliaments during the civil war and the interregnum passed into oblivion so the general post office gpo was officially established by charles ii in 1660 . 15 between 1719 and 1763 ralph allen postmaster at bath signed a series of contracts with the post office to develop and expand britain s postal network . he organised mail coaches which were provided by both wilson & company of london and williams & company of bath . the early royal mail coaches were similar to ordinary family coaches but with post office livery . 16 the first mail coach ran in 1784 operating between bristol and london . delivery staff received uniforms for the first time in 1793 and the post office investigation branch was established ; it is the world s oldest recognised criminal investigations authority . the first mail train ran in 1830 on the liverpool and manchester railway . the post office s money order system was introduced in 1838 . 17 uniform penny postage edit royal mail post office regulations handbill giving details of the uniform penny post dated 7 january 1840 main article uniform penny post in december 1839 the first substantial reform started when postage rates were revised by the short lived uniform fourpenny post . 18 greater changes took place when the uniform penny post was introduced on 10 january 1840 whereby a single rate for delivery anywhere in great britain and ireland was pre paid by the sender . 19 a few months later to certify that postage had been paid on a letter the sender could affix the first adhesive postage stamp the penny black that was available for use from 6 may the same year . 20 other innovations were the introduction of pre paid william mulready designed postal stationery letter sheets and envelopes . 21 as britain was the first country to issue prepaid postage stamps 20 british stamps are the only stamps that do not bear the name of the country of issue on them . 22 by the late 19th century there were between six and twelve mail deliveries per day in london permitting correspondents to exchange multiple letters within a single day . 23 the first trial of the london pneumatic despatch company was made in 1863 sending mail by underground rail between postal depots . the post office began its telegraph service in 1870 . 24 pillar boxes edit pillar box dating from the reign of queen victoria main article pillar box the first post office pillar box was erected in 1852 in jersey . pillar boxes were introduced in mainland britain the following year . 25 british pillar boxes traditionally carry the latin initials of the reigning monarch at the time of their installation for example vr for victoria regina or gr for georgius rex . such branding is not used in scotland due to dispute over the current monarch s title . some scottish nationalists argue that queen elizabeth ii should have simply been queen elizabeth as there had been no previous queen elizabeth of the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland only of after 1707 kingdom of england and wales . that dispute included vandalism and attacks on pillar and post boxes introduced in scotland that displayed eiir . to avoid the dispute pillar boxes in scotland were either marked post office or use the scots crown . 26 a national telephone service was opened by the post office in 1912 . in 1919 the first international airmail service was developed by royal engineers postal section and royal air force . the london post office railway was opened in 1927 . 27 in 1941 a airgraph service was introduced between uk and egypt . the service was later extended to canada 1941 east africa 1941 burma 1942 india 1942 south africa 1942 australia 1943 new zealand 1943 ceylon 1944 and italy 1944 . 28 corporatisation edit historic vehicle fleet under the post office act 1969 the general post office was changed from a government department to a statutory corporation known simply as the post office . the office of postmaster general was abolished and replaced with the positions of chairman and chief executive in the new company . 29 the two class postal system was introduced in 1968 using first class and second class services . the post office opened the national giro bank that year . 30 in 1971 postal services in great britain were suspended for two months between january and march as the result of a national postal strike over a pay claim . 31 postcodes were extended across great britain and northern ireland between 1959 and 1974 . 32 postal workers held their first national strike for 17 years in 1988 after walking out over bonuses being paid to recruit new workers in london and the south east . royal mail established romec royal mail engineering & construction in 1989 to deliver facilities maintenance services to its business . romec is 51 % owned by royal mail and 49 % by haden building management ltd which became balfour beatty workplace and now cofely uk . part of gdf suez in a joint venture . 33 as of 2016 romec is wholly owned by royal mail group after the purchase of the 49 % stake held by cofely . british telecom was separated from the gpo in 1980 and demerged as an independent business in 1981 . girobank was sold to alliance & leicester in 1990 and royal mail parcels was rebranded as parcelforce . the remaining business continued under public ownership as privatisation of this was deemed to be too unpopular . however in the 1990s president of the board of trade michael heseltine began investigating a possible sale and eventually a green paper on postal reform was published in may 1994 outlining various options for privatisation . the ideas though proved controversial and were dropped from the 1994 queen s speech after a number of conservative mps warned heseltine they would not vote for the legislation . 34 modernisation edit after a change of government in 1997 the labour administration decided to keep the post office state owned but with more commercial freedom . this led to the postal services act 2000 where the post office became a public limited company in which the secretary of state for trade and industry owned 50 004 ordinary shares plus 1 special share and the treasury solicitor held 1 ordinary share . 35 the company was renamed consignia plc in 2001 36 and the new name was intended to show that the company did more than deliver mail ; however the change was very unpopular with both the public and employees . the communication workers union boycotted the name and the following year it was announced that the company would be renamed royal mail group plc. 37 as part of the 2000 act the government set up a postal regulator the postal services commission known as postcomm which offered licences to private companies to deliver mail . in 2001 the consumer council for postal services known as postwatch was created for consumers to express any concerns they may have with the postal service in britain . 38 in 2004