Royal Mail is opening six temporary parcel sort centres for the Christmas period and will take on about 23,000 seasonal workers as part of its festive operation.
Last year, Royal Mail handled around 149 million parcels during the Christmas rush.
The parcel sort centres are again being set up to sort a significant proportion of the seasonal parcels that Royal Mail handles before they are delivered to the door by its postmen and women. The parcel sort centres, which will open on a phased basis from next month, are in Atherstone (Warwickshire); Bathgate (West Lothian); Cardiff; Wakefield (West Yorkshire); Skelmersdale (West Lancashire) and Greenford (west London).
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.
Overall, Royal Mail Group is taking on 23,000 seasonal workers in total this year across all its operations. The company said that 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.
Earlier this month, Royal Mail started its drive to recruit around 23,000 temporary workers to help sort the Christmas post and the increasing amount of online Christmas shopping.
Temporary positions across a variety of shifts are available, from late October through to early January 2019. The peak of the additional temporary work will be in the busiest month of December.
In addition, Royal Mail Group’s express parcels business, Parcelforce Worldwide, is looking for around 2,250 sorting staff and drivers across the UK. There are also around 1,900 sorting and driving jobs in Royal Mail’s logistics arm, 1,100 data inputting roles in three sites in the UK and 740 roles at its international hub at Heathrow.
Sue Whalley, Royal Mail post and parcels CEO, said: “Christmas continues to be our busiest time of year. We plan all year round to ensure we deliver the best possible service for UK consumers and businesses before, during and after the Festive Season.
“We continue to make this substantial commitment in additional resources, including the recruitment of thousands of temporary workers, to ensure we can continue to deal with the huge amount of festive parcels, cards and online shopping orders, which we will be asked to deliver for our customers in every part of the country.”
