Is there post today? Royal Mail delivery dates for bank holidays and if Post Offices are open on 2 January

A series of strikes involving Royal Mail workers severely affected Christmas post this year, leading to the last festive postage dates being moved to earlier in December.

That was before you factored in the festive bank holidays, which give many of us a four-day weekend this year, but also disrupt everything from supermarket opening times and bin collection days to postal services.

With Monday 2 January another day off, here’s how Royal Mail deliveries work today and what we know about if there will be more postal walkouts.

Is there post today?

Royal Mail delivers and collects mail on most days of the year, including Saturdays, but not on bank holidays.

This means that there is no post on Monday 2 January across the UK, because this is the substitute bank holiday for New Year’s Day.

There will also not be deliveries in Scotland on Tuesday 3 January, which is being marked as a bank holiday there, although services will resume around the rest of the country.

Postal deliveries were suspended last week on Boxing Day and Tuesday 27 December, which was marked as the substitute bank holiday for Christmas Day.

Opening policies for Post Offices vary around the UK, and can depend on if they are local or main branches (and if the retailers they are housed within are open too).

The best way to check your local branch’s bank holiday opening times is by entering your postcode into the branch finder here.

Will there be more Royal Mail strikes?

The long-running series of Royal Mail strikes caused significant disruption in the build-up to Christmas, with the last walkouts coming on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 December.

There are no further strike dates currently confirmed for 2023, but the dispute between Royal Mail and the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) shows little sign of reaching a conclusion.

Royal Mail tabled its “best and final” offer to workers in late November. It said the offer includes “extensive improvements” that have been made during the negotiations with the CWU, including an enhanced pay deal of up to 9 per cent over 18 months, offering to develop a new profit share scheme for employees, and making voluntary redundancy terms more generous.

The union countered with its own offer, which Andy Furey, the CWU’s acting deputy general secretary, said had been “thrown back in our face”, adding there were “no further talks planned at this stage”.

Ahead of the recent pre-Christmas strikes the CWU said: “An offer extended to the company to suspend the strikes and establish a period of calm from now until 16 January 2023, as well as the union and the company both signing a joint statement incorporating Royal Mail’s latest promise of no compulsory redundancies, was rejected almost immediately.”

On its website, the union states: “The pay dispute is not complicated. Our members are striking for a pay rise that fully addresses the current cost of living. Our members need it, our members deserve it – the company can afford it.”

Royal Mail has said: “We’re urging CWU leadership to accept the change and pay offer, call off future damaging strike action, for the good of our customers and our people.

“We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience the CWU’s continued strike action will cause.”

Simon Thompson, Royal Mail’s chief executive, said: “Talks have lasted for seven months and we have made numerous improvements and two pay offers.”

Why is it a bank holiday today?

Usually, the whole of the UK gets three bank holidays during the festive period.

These are on Christmas Day (25 December), Boxing Day (26 December) and New Year’s Day (1 January) – Scotland then gets an additional day off on 2 January.

However, when these dates fall on a weekend, the holidays are moved to substitute days to ensure people don’t miss out, which tends to result in a bumper long weekend for celebrations.

This year, both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fell on Sunday, so these dates were moved – it means that the UK-wide festive bank holidays have been as follows:

Because the bank holiday on 2 January clashes with the usual date of Scotland’s additional day off, this has been moved to Tuesday 3 January.