Postal staff sort out backlog

Thirty Royal Mail staff worked through the weekend trying to clear a backlog of 50,000 letters at the Cheltenham sorting office.

The extra workers were drafted into Swindon Road where they sorted the post ready for delivery later this week.

Gywn Williams, sector operations manager for Gloucestershire, said first and second class mail will not be affected.

He said: “I think it’s going to take us about a week to get on top of it.”

The majority of the items are catalogues and leaflets.

Mr Williams said: “I wouldn’t want our customers to be alarmed and think their normal first and second class mail isn’t going to be delivered.

“The items we’re talking about are advertising and promotional material.

“A lot of items are area sorted and a lot of the effort has been getting it through the first sorting process. The deliveries are going to be heavy all week.

“The world doesn’t stop and we’ve had more advertising mail come in.”

The increase is due to businesses sending out catalogues and advertising in the run-up to Christmas.

On Friday, Royal Mail spokesman Adrian Booth said the increase had caught them on the hop.

“We haven’t got the planning right because we didn’t predict the amount of mail that would come,” he said.

“We’ve messed up and would like to apologise.”