Royal Mail / Parcelforce aren’t making themselves competitive these days, at a time when hermes, UPS, DPD, etc are all doing huge business, expanding and so on i just see RM bringing in more stupid rules like this, which is confusing as within the UK i can send aerosols with flammable liquid inside, i can send lead acid batteries within the UK and so on, but a pair of forks is prohibited, they’re not Hazardous Classes either, just weird.
As for the question, DPD seem a decent bet, they tend to have drop off/pick up points everywhere now, same with hermes, both have improved over the years as well, and cheaper to post with, i used hermes last time, but will be using DPD in the future due to discounts i can get.