Hundreds of jobs are at risk in Manchester, Liverpool and London after Whistl confirmed it would be ending its end-to-end (E2E) postal delivery operations.
The company said that delays to the rollout of the operation due to regulatory issues impacted on its ability to invest, expand coverage and meet the targets of the original business plan to deliver a long-term sustainable service.
Whistl suspended its end-to-end service in May 2015 as it assessed a number of alternative options. Now Whistl and its parent company PostNL have issued statements announcing that the service is being discontinued.
Whistl UK said: "The PostNL and Whistl management team have undertaken a thorough strategic review of the E2E (letter delivery to consumers' homes) operation and have concluded, unfortunately, that there is no viable alternative solution that will ensure a sustainable future for the current service and therefore it will not continue.
"The rollout of E2E began in 2012 and was put on hold due to numerous regulatory issues. These delays impacted on our ability to invest in the service, expand our coverage, and ultimately to meet the targets of the original business plan and deliver a long-term sustainable service.
"Whistl is in ongoing consultation with the affected employees in E2E through their union and employee representatives to minimise the impact of this difficult decision."
PostNL added that Whistl "remains committed to further developing its successful activities in the UK, including downstream access service, door drop media, packets & parcels and logistics".
Whistl is the second largest postal operator in the UK. In the year ending 31 December 2014, Whistl UK generated revenues of £575m. It also slipped from a pre-tax profit of £5.7m to pre-tax losses of £8.1m after being hit by £14.5m of exceptional costs.
Whistl was formerly known as TNT Post UK until it rebranded in September 2014.
When announcing that the E2E service would be suspended in May 2015, it was reported that 2,000 staff were at risk of redundancy. A spokesman told Insider at the time that 401 staff were being consulted in Manchester and 269 staff in Liverpool, with the remainder in London.