Royal Mail is starting its earlier announced Sunday delivery pilot for addresses within theGreater London area this weekend, with over 100 busiest delivery offices across the UK also opening
on Sundays, to make it easier for online shoppers to get their parcels if they are not at homeduring the day.Royal Mail’s network of around 1,400 delivery offices is currently open six days a week. As partof the trial run, Royal Mail will extend Sunday deliveries to offices with the highest parcelsvolumes across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The delivery offices taking part inthe project will be opened on Sundays between 12-4 pm.
Around 1,600 of the 11,800 Post Office branches across the UK are now also open on Sunday.Parcelforce Worldwide, Royal Mail’s parcel subsidiary, already started delivering on Sundaysthrough participating e-retailers in June this year.
Royal Mail said the investment in extended opening hours builds on the choices already availableto people who are not at home when delivery is attempted.
Nick Landon, Managing Director of Royal Mail Parcels, said: “We are continuing to be morecustomer-responsive and provide more options for people to receive items they have ordered online.I am delighted to pilot Sunday afternoon opening at around 100 of our delivery offices across theUK with the highest parcel volumes, and Sunday deliveries to addresses within the M25motorway.”
The CWU union backed the Royal Mail Sunday delivery pilot. Dave Ward, CWU deputy generalsecretary, said: “Royal Mail employees are keen to work with the company to improve services forcustomers. Delivering on Sunday is an important initiative and one of the ways in which Royal Mail,with the help of its workers, is modernising.”
“We’ve negotiated that staff can opt to work on Sundays voluntarily and we’ve ensured they areproperly compensated. We have worked hard to make sure that Royal Mail is committed to using fulland part-time staff rather than agency workers,” he added.
Last month, Royal Mail announced plans to extend its Local Collect ‘click and collect’ servicewith Post Offices to its 20,000 SME contract customers to enable them to offer online shoppers theoption of collecting their items at one of the 10,500 Post Office branches. Launched in May lastyear, the click and collect service complements Royal Mail’s delivery options for online purchasesand is part of its growth strategy of focusing on the rapidly expanding parcels market. In the UK,Royal Mail’s parcel business is particularly focusing on the consumer, micro SME and SME marketsegments.
