The office sees around twice as many parcels and letters sent during the festive period compared to other months. This is due to people sending their Christmas cards and the rise in online shopping for gifts. The Blackburn office has hired eight new recruits and brought in seven new vehicles for the Christmas period to meet the increased demand for deliveries in the local area.
During the visit, Independent MP Mr Hussain spoke with lead customer operations manager Steven Hitchen about Royal Mail's strategy to make sending and receiving parcels as 'convenient as possible' over the festive period by adding more choices. This includes services like Parcel Collect, where posties pick up parcels from customers at the doorstep and offer more ways to drop off parcels at convenient times and locations. Mr Hussain said: "Royal Mail is an iconic part of Christmas in the UK – it wouldn’t be the same without our posties.
"I’ve got a newfound appreciation for what they do after seeing how the operation works on the inside." Royal Mail has already rolled out more than 5,000 parcel points this year, including at Collect+ stores and its growing number of parcel lockers. The company has recruited 16,000 temporary workers to help its 85,000 posties sort the additional mail and increasing number of parcels expected over the festive period.
Almost 4,000 new vans, trucks and trailers are being added to the fleet in time for Christmas . Steven Hitchen, lead customer operations manager for Blackburn, said: "It was great to have Adnan visit our delivery office and to show him how we are gearing up for our peak period. "We are pulling out all the stops to deliver Christmas for our customers.
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MP visits local delivery office to show support for posties in Christmas run up
Blackburn's MP visited his local delivery office to find out more about the run-up to Christmas and show support to posties.