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5 top UK news stories today: Royal Mail letters sit undelivered for weeks, AI chatbots face big fines or bans & more (16 February 2026)

Ryan Brothwell 16 February 2026 3 min read

Here’s your UK news roundup for Monday (16 February 2026):

Royal Mail letters sit undelivered for weeks

More than a dozen Royal Mail postal staff from different delivery offices claim rounds are being missed on a daily basis and parcels are being prioritised over letters as they are stretched beyond capacity. Postal workers told the BBC some letters sit in postal depots for weeks, while the union representing them describes Royal Mail as “a company in crisis”. Hundreds of people have contacted BBC Your Voice to express frustration over delayed mail, resulting in issues including missed hospital appointments.

AI chatbots face big fines or bans

Makers of AI chatbots that put children at risk will face massive fines or even see their services blocked in the UK under law changes to be announced by Keir Starmer on Monday. Emboldened by Elon Musk’s X stopping its Grok AI tool from creating sexualised images of real people in the UK after public outrage last month, ministers are planning a “crackdown on vile illegal content created by AI”. With more and more children using chatbots for everything from help with their homework to mental health support, the government said it would “move fast to shut a legal loophole and force all AI chatbot providers to abide by illegal content duties in the Online Safety Act or face the consequences of breaking the law”. [Guardian]

Buy-to-let landlords go corporate in record numbers

Buy-to-let landlords set up a record number of companies to hold their portfolios last year, as investors sought to use the structures to get around years of tax rises that have dampened demand in the sector. A total of 66,587 buy-to-let firms were founded in the UK in 2025, an 8 per cent increase on the previous year, bringing the overall total to 443,272 – almost five times the number recorded in 2016. The numbers recorded at Companies House have continued to rise so far this year, with 5,922 incorporations in January – 11% more than the same month in 2025 – according to an analysis by the estate agency Hamptons. [The Times]

Natwest goes all in on AI

Young people should consider studying tech if they want a career in banking, the boss of NatWest has suggested. Paul Thwaite, the chief executive, said banks were looking for “very different” graduates from those hired in the past amid the coming boom in artificial intelligence (AI). He said data scientists, software engineers, architecture planners, and ‘prompt engineers’ – people who design instructions for AI tools – were the new breed of banker he was seeking to hire. The profile of graduates that we recruit today, and we’ll do in future years, is very different, for example, to what we were recruiting four or five years ago,” he said. [Telegraph]