The Royal Mail General Terms and Conditions require you to provide a forecast for anything over more than 4000 letters or 1000 large letters or packets, you or your agent must tell us in writing of the actual number of items you want to hand over. You must do this by 3pm on the working day before the handover (or, if the handover is scheduled for a day which is not a working day by 3pm on the Thursday before that day), You or your agent must tell us by 10am on the day of the handover if the number of items you will hand over varies by up to 5% from the number you previously gave us. We may not be able to collect or process any items which exceed this amended forecast.

In order to make it easier for you to forecast your traffic volumes we are testing an easy to use process using the   attached forecast spreadsheets. This is being tested in SL, HA, UB, NW, W5, 7, 13 E post code areas and if successful will be rolled out nationally in the near future.

What we would like customers in the SL, HA, UB, NW, W5, 7, 13 E post code areas (with the exception of Mailsort, Presstream or Walksort customers who should continue to follow their existing forecasting arrangements) to do now is complete the attached forecast excel document using the following example;

Every Friday we would like you to send us your rolling weekly forecast based on average posting levels. Following this we would like you to confirm by 3.00pm on the day before you post your mail your amendments to forecast. Any final changes to posting forecast can be accepted by 10 am on the day of posting, if you do not give us this notice, we may not be able to collect or process your posting in full on the same working day, although we will try to do so.

The Forecast template can be downloaded here:

Domestic forecasting template (zip 3.30KB)

Any International mailing will need to be forecasted by the following criteria; 

• Destination Sort - 500 bags worldwide or 50 bags to one destination
• Zone and Format (if going to multiple destinations) - 30k letters, 10k flats and 5k packets 
• Zone and Format (if going to single destination) - 20k letters, 5k flats and 1k packets
• International STL - follow same guidelines as Zone and Format
• International Bulk Mail (IBM) - all IBM mailings must be forecast

The form to be used can be downloaded here (zip 35.4KB)

For customers who are based in the SL, HA, UB, NW, W5, 7, 13 post code areas;

Please send your completed forecast either by email as an attachment to hcwtrafficforecasting@royalmail.com using email subject headings ‘Weekly’, ‘Daily by 3pm’ or ‘Daily by 10am' or by fax to 0208 578 4514.

For customers who are based in the KT, TW, GU post code areas; 

Please send your completed forecast either by email as an attachment to jubileetrafficforecasting@royalmail.com using email subject headings ‘Weekly’, ‘Daily by 3pm’ or ‘Daily by 10am' or by fax to 0208 755 6405

For customers who are based in the E post code areas: 
Please send your completed forecast either by email as an attachment to PPI_Forecasting_East_London@royalmail.com using email subject headings ‘Weekly’, ‘Daily by 3pm’ or ‘Daily by 10am'

Other areas will be coming on soon.