Christmas cards ‘won’t arrive until February’

CHRISTMAS cards will not arrive until February because Royal Mail backlogs will be worsened by strikes, union sources have warned.

Millions of letters have reportedly started piling up after 115,000 staff yesterday began six days of industrial action. Insiders claimed that the strikes’ “catastrophic” impact could mean customers were left without deliveries for months.

A source said: “The back-up of the post is really bad. Royal Mail is focusing on parcels and there is not a lot of room in the model for letters.”

He added: “Christmas cards will likely be very late” with some “certainly” not arriving until February. Royal Mail insisted that there was “no evidence” to suggest Christmas cards would arrive as late as February and that it had put in place contingency plans to minimise delays.

It comes as thousands of Royal Mail staff gathered for a rally in central London yesterday to demand better pay and conditions. They claimed it was the biggest postal workers’ demonstration in living memory.

Members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents postal workers, are planning walkouts tomorrow and on Dec 14, 15, 23 and 24.

Dave Ward, CWU’S general secretary said that the “unachievable” conditions proposed by postal bosses, which include starting work three hours later, would “destroy the future of Royal Mail”. Urging the two sides to restart negotiations, Catherine West, Labour MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, who campaigns against postal delays, said that last year she received “countless distressing emails” from people who had spent Christmas “alone and isolating without a single card or gift arriving”.

Some households’ Christmas cards did not arrive until January because of staff absences as the omicron coronavirus variant swept through Britain. One customer said 25 to 30 Christmas cards had arrived in mid January.

The unprecedented delays also affected packages, legal documents and hospital appointment letters. Post that

should have dropped through letterboxes in one or two days took weeks.

This month’s disruption means Royal Mail’s recommended Christmas post cut-off date is the earliest since records began in the 1880s. Customers have been advised to post gifts and cards sent second class by Monday if they want them to arrive by Dec 25.

Business owners have shut early because of the delays, with one firm saying it has lost up to £500,000. Others have turned to alternative delivery services, such as DPD and Evri, formerly Hermes.

The postal strikes come amid a winter of industrial action in the UK, with walkouts planned by nurses, ambulance staff, rail workers, Border Force and National Highways officers.

Royal Mail is trying to overhaul the 500-year-old business into a parcels-led company to compete against rivals such as Amazon. It says it is losing £1million a day, which it says is unsustainable.

The CWU, which represents 115,000 postal workers, has accused Royal Mail of wanting to make the service like a “gig economy”.

This month Ofcom told Royal Mail it cannot use the pandemic as an excuse for late deliveries, as it has had “plenty of time” to learn from the disruption.

A Royal Mail spokesman said it was working hard to minimise delays, adding: “This assertion is based on the views of a single anonymous contact.

“There is no evidence to suggest that Christmas cards will arrive in February.”