Up to 600 Christmas jobs on offer at Royal Mail including Warrington

Royal Mail is gearing up for its seasonal drive to deliver Christmas for its customers, recruiting an army of 16,000 temporary workers to help its 110,000 posties sort the mail.

The business is also increasing the number of online shopping parcels it expects to process over the festive period.

Christmas is Royal Mail’s busiest period, with around double the normal volumes of parcels, and stamped letters processed.

The company has increased its fleet with an additional 6,800 vehicles across the group and hired more than 1,000 road haulage contractors to transport festive mail and parcels across the country.

The company’s two new automated ‘super hubs’, at Omega in Warrington and in Daventry, Northamptonshire, will be hiring up to 600 additional staff as they expect two million parcels per day to be processed across both sites.

A total 176,500 square-metres of extra temporary space – equivalent to 16 football pitches – has been created across five seasonal parcel sort centres in Atherstone, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Daventry and Greenford in London.

The temporary positions will be located in 37 mail centres across the country, with a variety of shifts available.

Contracts will run from late October through to early January 2024. The period for the additional temporary work includes Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but will be at its peak in December.

Parcelforce Worldwide is also recruiting additional drivers and indoor workers.

Grant McPherson, chief operating officer at Royal Mail said: “We are pulling out all the stops to deliver Christmas.

“It is our busiest time of the year and we know how important it is to deliver on time for our customers.

“By planning ahead and hiring more people, vans and trucks, we are well-prepared to handle the increase in festive mail and parcels and deliver the high standards of service our customers expect from Royal Mail.

“To protect the quality of service, we are currently finalising capacity with our existing customers and will be considering any new requests very carefully.

“Any new or existing customers looking to request additional volume should speak to us now to ensure we can accommodate their requirements.”