Royal Mail denies festive post delays

Oldhamers expecting Christmas parcels could face delays because of a pile up of mail at delivery offices.

The warning came after it was claimed some post remained untouched for a week at Hamilton Street, the town’s main postal centre.

An unsigned note accompanying photographs of parcels and packages stacked in “Yorkies” — metal cages — at the centre said: “People in Oldham should be aware of the backlog of parcels already backed up in the delivery office.

“If they are waiting for their Christmas presents they are probably sat in these cages, some of which are now a week old.”

This week is the peak time for mail and last posting dates are Friday for second class mail and Monday, December 21, for first class.

But a Royal Mail spokesman, who was sent copies of the pictures, denied there were long delays.

He said: “Due to an unprecedented increase in the number of parcels being posted this Christmas there is a delay of up to two days on the delivery of a number of items from Oldham delivery office.

“However, we have planned in extra resources to cope with the additional mail at this time of year, and all items taken out by our postmen and women each day are being delivered.”

A postal observer, who claimed full-time postal teams are “run ragged”, said: “Drivers simply don’t have enough time to do the parcels and the postmen don’t have enough time to sort them.

“Santa Claus runs a better delivery service.

“For example, if a postman can’t deliver a parcel because someone is not in when he calls, the parcel has to be put back in the system. This means it could take another couple of weeks to arrive at the Royal Mail office ready for the customer to pick it up, because it has to go through Manchester before it arrives back in Oldham to join the queue.”

Another source close to the Royal Mail said: “It is chaos. Mail is stacking up in these wire cages. There were more than 60 of them and we are only getting a trickle of parcels through.

“There have been moves to get staff to work on Sundays to get rid of the backlog. Parcels in Oldham have gone up by more than 50 per cent this year with more people buying on line. One customer came into one office asking for a parcel that should have arrived two weeks ago.”

The Royal Mail spokesman added: “We operate a temporary facility at Heywood each year in the run up to Christmas to help process the greater volume of parcels which enter our system.”