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COVID-19 restrictions have limited people’s movements during the 2020 festive season – meaning Royal Mail is as crucial as ever this Christmas.
Royal Mail has already admitted to delivery delays, blaming “exceptionally high volumes” of post as lockdown and Christmas merge. So is there post today (December 24, 2020) and when will services resume after the festive period?
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Is there post today?
Royal Mail will still deliver post as normal today, Christmas Eve (December 24, 2020) – meaning there is one more chance you will receive something special in the post.
On Monday, December 21, Royal Mail announced changes to their Special Delivery services in light of the new coronavirus restrictions announced on Saturday, December 19.
In an announcement on their website, Royal Mail said that they were “suspending our delivery guarantee” for items posted on Wednesday, December 23.
This applies to all Special Delivery Guaranteed parcels by 9am and 1pm.
The statement read: “While we cannot currently provide a guarantee that items posted on Wednesday 23rd December will arrive prior to Christmas due to the impact of the new coronavirus restrictions, we can assure you that we will be endeavouring to deliver all items as quickly as possible.
“We know how important this is.”
In other words, parcels or mail sent by Special Delivery from Wednesday, December 23, are not guaranteed to reach the intended recipient before Christmas Day.
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When can I next expect post after Christmas Eve?
Normal Royal Mail services will resume on Tuesday, December 29, 2020, due to Boxing Day falling on a Saturday.
This means that the bank holiday rolls over to Monday, December 28.
As such there will be no Royal Mail deliveries on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Sunday, December 27 or Monday, December 28.
There is no delivery service on New Year’s Day (Friday, January 1, 2021) as it is a bank holiday.
And in Scotland, there is no delivery on January 2 as this is a bank holiday, although it is a Saturday so the break will be taken on Monday, January 4.
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How is Royal Mail handling the extra post this year?
An extra 33,000 temporary workers were hired by Royal Mail support its 115,000 permanent posties
New sorting offices set up in Milton Keynes and Northampton added to the usual extra capacity that Royal Mail takes on each Christmas.
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Royal Mail said in a statement: “Despite our best efforts, exhaustive planning and significant investment in extra resource, some customers may experience slightly longer delivery timescales than our usual service standards.”
It continued: “This is due to the exceptionally high volumes we are seeing, exacerbated by the coronavirus-related measures we have put in place in local mail centres and delivery offices.
“In such cases, we always work hard to get back to providing our usual level of service as quickly as we can.”
