Royal Mail temporarily suspends Saturday letter service due to ‘severe’ absence levels among staff

Parcel deliveries will continue, Royal Mail says

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Saturday letter deliveries will be temporarily axed due to the ongoing pandemic, Royal Mail has announced.

Beginning 2 May, Royal Mail will only deliver letters to people’s homes between Monday and Friday.

However, Royal Mail says that most parcels – including Special Delivery and Track, as well as non-account services – would continue to operate six days per week as normal.

Saturday collections from businesses, Post Offices and post boxes will also continue as normal, according to a statement on Royal Mail’s website.

Post Offices and Royal Mail, both considered essential services, have remained open since lockdown began on 23 March.

On Tuesday, Royal Mail said that it had been under increasing pressure to deliver services due to “significantly high” staff absence rates.

“We continue to work hard to collect, process and deliver the UK’s mail in unprecedented times,” the statement reads.

“However, along with other organisations, we are experiencing increased levels of employee absence due to illness and self-isolation.

“Absence rates are currently significantly higher than what we normally expect at this time of year.

“To manage these severe absence levels, we are implementing a range of mitigations. These include changing the time guarantee on Special Delivery, deploying non-operational managers in delivery and temporarily no longer delivering letters on a Saturday.”

Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Royal Mail told The Independent that the organisation had contingency plans in place to deal with the ongoing lockdown.

“We have strong contingency plans in place to ensure mail is kept moving,” the spokesperon added.

“The scale, vast network and business continuity expertise of our organisation means we have extensive experience in being able to quickly deploy plans so we continue to provide customers with access to our collection and delivery services, and their mail.”