HARWICH MP Sir Bernard Jenkin has visited the town’s Royal Mail delivery office this week following the recruitment of eight extra staff for the Christmas period.

The eight new posties in Harwich include some new recruits and staff members from the Clacton office, with two of them focused on boosting afternoon parcel deliveries in the area.

Five new posties were confirmed for the town in September, with Harwich Town Council being told the service is improving from earlier this year when it was one day recorded as one of the six “most- most impacted” offices in the country.

Christmas is Royal Mail’s busiest period, with around double the normal volume of letters and parcels processed, which led to Sir Bernard asking customer operations manager Tom Rowland about Royal Mail’s strategy for the festive season.

Mr Rowland said the service would add more choice to make sending and receiving parcels as convenient as possible over the festive period.

This includes services such as Parcel Collect, where posties pick up parcels from customers at the doorstep, and instead offer more ways to drop off parcels at convenient times and locations.

It comes as 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.

Busy - Royal Mail has double the volume of parcels during the festive season (Image: Submitted) Mr Rowland said: “It was great to have Sir Bernard 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.”

Sir Bernard 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.”

Across the UK, Royal Mail has recruited 16,000 temporary workers to help its 85,000 postmen and women, and is increasing the number of parcels expected over the festive period.

Almost 4,000 new vans, trucks and trailers are also being added to the fleet for Christmas.