On 12 March 2025, the Competition Appeal Tribunal granted Bulk Mail Claim Limited (BMCL) a Collective Proceedings Order. This decision enables BMCL to pursue claims for damages on behalf of retail bulk mail customers, which include various businesses and organizations, such as public entities and charities, that engage in high-volume mailings within the UK.

Retail customers acquire bulk mail retail services from Royal Mail and “access operators” operating within the bulk mail retail services market. Access operators are responsible for collecting bulk mail and performing initial sorting before transferring the mail to Royal Mail for final delivery. Royal Mail is dominant in the relevant end-delivery market, which constitutes the largest portion of the expenses associated with sending bulk mail.

In 2018, Ofcom finalized an investigation that determined Royal Mail had abused its dominant position in 2014 by proposing discriminatory pricing for bulk mail delivery. This strategy aimed to eliminate Whistl from the end-delivery market and safeguard Royal Mail’s monopoly.

Whistl was a major access operator for bulk mail and had started to roll out its own delivery operations to the final recipients in specific areas. The company intended to broaden its end-to-end delivery offerings throughout the UK, thereby eroding Royal Mail’s market share.

Whistl claimed the infringement caused it to lose profit and forced the company to abandon its full-scale bulk mail delivery plans. The claim was estimated at around 600 million pounds and has recently been settled on confidential terms.

On 12 October 2018, Royal Mail filed an appeal against the Ofcom Decision to the CAT on multiple grounds, all of which were rejected in the Tribunal’s ruling dated 12 November 2019. Following this, Royal Mail appealed the CAT Judgment to the Court of Appeal, which dismissed this second appeal on 7 May 2021. Subsequently, Royal Mail sought permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, but this request was denied on 7 June 2022.

BMCL asserts that had it not been for Royal Mail’s actions, bulk mail retail customers would have experienced lower prices due to increased competition in the end-delivery sector. The CPO Notice estimates the damages to be around £1 billion.

In its decision, the Tribunal dismissed Royal Mail’s two objections to the certification, which were related to BMCL’s expert methodology for calculating damages, primarily on the grounds that these matters should be resolved during the trial.