Royal Mail will have to turn to the Government for more cash after revealing that it lost nearly £1 million a day last year, its chairman and chief executive have conceded.

Speaking yesterday after the group announced a pre-tax loss of £279 million for last year, Allan Leighton, the chairman, said that Royal Mail would need to know what funding would be possible for its next business plan.

He said: “We have got to know what cash we will have coming in.” Adam Crozier, the chief executive, said: “Clearly, the business needs more cash to invest.”

Royal Mail would be likely to seek billions from the Government, or possibly banks, if its ownership structure were relaxed. Mr Leighton said: “This is a company which is big and has big numbers. It has a constant capital expenditure of £400 to £500 million a year. The issue is where is that capital going to come from.”

The expectation that Royal Mail will seek more money from the Government - its sole shareholder - comes only a year after it received a £3.9 billion rescue package. Seeking more public money will stir calls from critics that Royal Mail should undergo a radical overhaul.

Royal Mail is halfway through closing 2,500 small post offices in an effort to make the Post Office division break even.

Mr Leighton said that the group's pension contributions could soar to £1 billion a year when the pension fund, which has a £3.4 billion deficit, is re-evaluated in the autumn. The group already pays £800 million a year into the fund to help to clear the deficit and cover running costs.

Royal Mail is seeking a fundamental shake-up of the way it is regulated. It advocates the rescinding of some of its responsibilities under its universal service obligation - a flat-rate price for general postage regardless of distance. It wants some business elements of this to be revoked but Mr Crozier said that domestic consumers would remain protected.

The first findings from an independent review for the Government into postal services declared this week that the market was not working.

Mr Crozier said that increased mechanisation would yield further job losses. A batch of new machines will be introduced in July. “There is no definitive number [of redundancies] but in the end we will have fewer mail centres and fewer people,” he said.

Unite, Britain's biggest union, called for the dismissal of Mr Leighton and Mr Crozier. Paul Reuter, national officer, said: “Unite considers that the current senior management team have taken the organisation as far as they can, and in many ways they've taken Royal Mail backwards.

“We call upon the Government to review these positions and put in place a team that can lead change, engage its unions and workforce and secure a prosperous future for Royal Mail.”

The Communication Workers Union called for the independent review of the postal market to investigate the finances of Royal Mail, accusing it of “lurching between proclaiming a turnaround and a huge success to warning of crisis”.

Royal Mail's revenue increased by 2.3 per cent to £9.3 billion but group operating profit before exceptionals plunged 30.4 per cent to £162 million. After exceptionals, including restructuring costs and payments into a new share incentive scheme for staff, Royal Mail made an operating loss of £279 million.

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