Royal Mail is opening six temporary parcel sort centres for the Christmas period as part of its festive operation. In years gone by this would be to handle the deluge of Christmas Cards in the post, but nowadays it’s parcels that contribute the biggest volumes over both the Black Friday holiday period and Christmas.
The parcel sort centres are again being set up to sort a significant proportion of the seasonal parcels Royal Mail handles, before they are delivered to the door by Royal Mail’s postmen and women. Last year, Royal Mail handled around 149 million parcels during the Christmas rush.
Around 2,700 seasonal workers will be based in the parcel sort centres. They will support Royal Mail’s 120,000 permanent postmen and women, who sort and deliver the mail all year round, including Christmas which is the busiest time of the year for the UK postal service. Royal Mail Group is taking on 23,000 seasonal workers in total this year across all its operations.
Royal Mail has set up a dedicated website for people to apply for the Christmas positions, or by emailing [email protected] or by calling the automated helpline on 0345 600 1785. Competitive pay rates are offered at all sites along with a flexible range of shifts and for those who want to work flexibly or less than 20 hours a week.
This is the eighth year that Royal Mail has opened a dedicated network of parcel sort centres. The use of additional temporary parcel sort centres is now an integral part of Royal Mail’s substantial financial commitment to additional resources at Christmas, to handle the festive mail bag.
The parcel sort centres are in in Atherstone in Warwickshire; Bathgate, West Lothian; Cardiff; Wakefield, West Yorkshire; Skelmersdale, West Lancashire and Greenford in west London, The centres will open on a phased basis from next month.
