Condition 9 of Royal Mail’s licence from PostComm requires access to RM’s delivery network to be granted to other postal companies at reasonable cost. Under their licences, granted by Royal Mail Wholesale, these operators collect, sort and consolidate mail and then convey that mail to “the relevant Royal Mail office” for delivery. Currently relevant offices are Mail Centres, but may ultimately be Delivery Offices. This process is known as “Downstream Access” (DSA), the other operators performing or sub-contracting the “Upstream” processes of collection, sorting to RM requirements and distribution to Mail Centres.

Individual items of ‘Condition 9 Access Mail’ are pre-printed with special PPI indicia including the Access indicator in the format ‘S/POSTAGE PAID GB/C9 10001’ (“Type 2”). (The format was changed from ‘S/ POSTAGE PAID/GB C9 10001’ (“Type 1”) in 2007 to allow the licence number to be shown more prominently). The significance of the bold S has not been confirmed, but it may stand for same (day), as Royal Mail is contracted to deliver such items within 24 hours of arrival at the Mail Centre. A logo to the left of the PPI indicia identifies the licence holder. Standard sizes for the “S-block” specified by Royal Mail Wholesale are 10 x 20 mm and 15 x 30 mm, but needless to say, as with other PPIs, variations occur in practice. Some DSA indicia are printed by ink-jet, while some are printed on labels or colour blocks to cover the original PPI on existing stationery.

In April 2010, Royal Mail Wholesale introduced Royal Mail Advertising Mail (TM), with discounts to stimulate Direct Mail advertising. Items posted under this service bear licence numbers beginning A9 in place of C9, as in the Brightpost example shown.

Downstream Access Licences can be divided into several groups:

1. Licences held by distribution companies, which consolidate and sort letters for their customers, and convey sorted mail to the appropriate Royal Mail mail centres. The major players are UK Mail (C9 10001), TNT Post (C9 10002) and DHL Global Mail (C9 10003). Smaller parcel delivery companies also entering the letter market include Geopost/MailPlus (C9 10011, now ceased), Target Express/City Link (C9 10012) and Lynx/UPS (C9 10014 & 10024). Newer “niche” mail companies comprise Secured Mail (C9 10017) and Citipost (C9 10020). Some Citipost DSA logos were accompanied by the additional logo of OnePost, a mailing consultancy, but OnePost later acquired their own licence.

2. Licences held by mailing or fulfilment companies, who carry out the entire process from marketing plan and origination to printing and sorting of mailings on behalf of their customers. Examples are Regional Mail Services/PostalNet (C9 10004), Brightsource (C9 10018) and Northern Mail (C9 10026). Distribution to Royal Mail sites may be carried out in-house or by sub-contractors. These are referred to as Agency licences.

3. Licences held by major producers of mail, mainly in the financial sector, which have a direct contractual relationship with Royal Mail, although distribution is generally carried out by one of the major mail companies listed in 1 above. The first such licence was probably C9 10005, used on mailings by T-Mobile; as with other such licences, mailings bear the logo or a symbol of the originator, rather than the mail company involved. One might wonder why more explicit logos, clearly identifying the banks and other companies concerned have not been generally used. My own guess is that “neutral” logos have been chosen to avoid confusion between various brands within a group (e.g. HBOS includes both Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and RBS Group includes RBS, NatWest and other subsidiaries. This type of licence is known as CDA - Customer Direct Access.

A list of licence numbers seen to date, and their actual or presumed holders, is available from our downloads page.

Many designs exist in both Types 1 and 2, and most exist in a variety of colours. The original specification for C9 indicia excluded negative or reversed print – i.e. white on a coloured background - although as with RM PPIs some customers or their printers used such logos in error or for design effect. However, Royal Mail Wholesale has now amended its rules, to allow reversed-out logos on certain conditions. Unfortunately, RMW regards the identity of licence holders as commercially confidential, but they did confirm that C9 10010 was not issued.

Page updated 25th March 2011