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Royal Mail has announced plans to recruit about 20,000 temporary staff nationally for the festive season. Positions include delivery, sorting and driving roles in York, Malton, Harrogate, Wetherby, Thirsk and Ripon, among other places.
Roles currently being advertised range from part-time to full-time, temporary and permanent.
The delivery giant said the new jobs will be split across two parcel hubs, four seasonal parcel sorting centres and 37 mail centres across the country.
The hiring spree will help it cope with a surge in demand around Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas.
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From delivering festive parcels to supporting online shopping, we’re investing heavily in extra resources, including thousands of seasonal team members, to help make sure every delivery arrives on time and with care Jamie Stephenson, Royal Mail.
There will be 12,000 mail centre sorting roles available in England, 2,000 in Scotland, 600 in Wales and 400 in Northern Ireland, the company said.
It added that there will also be 3,000 delivery and collection roles across the UK, as well as 2,000 temporary HGV and MGV driver’s roles.
Royal Mail will set up four extra seasonal sorting centres in Atherstone, Milton Keynes, Northampton and Daventry to help it fulfil deliveries.
Jamie Stephenson, Royal Mail interim chief operating officer, said: “As we do every year, we will be pulling out all the stops to make Christmas special for our customers.
“It’s the busiest time for us, and we work tirelessly behind the scenes – planning months in advance – to ensure everything runs smoothly.
“From delivering festive parcels to supporting online shopping, we’re investing heavily in extra resources, including thousands of seasonal team members, to help make sure every delivery arrives on time and with care.”
The seasonal roles will run from late October through to early January 2026.
Royal Mail has been preparing for months to deliver a bumper Christmas.
The company will be adding to the fleet of 48,200 vehicles (including 7,000 EVs) with an additional 6,800 hire vans to support this year’s seasonal campaign. In addition, over 1,200 road haulage contractors are being hired to transport the festive mail and parcels across the country.
Royal Mail has also made it easier to use its 115,000 post boxes to send smaller parcels that will fit through a letterbox, enabling customers to request proof of posting using the Royal Mail app, and is rolling out 3,500 post boxes of the future designed to accept larger parcels up to the size of a shoebox.
