Saturday letter deliveries have been scrapped across the UK until further notice due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Royal Mail announced they will temporarily stop the deliveries from this weekend due to pressure from workers to 'ease the additional burden' on them.
It said it will continue to provide its letter delivery service from Monday to Friday as normal and said customers “should continue to post both letters and parcels as usual on Saturday”.
Royal Mail will continue to collect all mail from businesses, post offices and post boxes, it said.
READ MORE: Royal Mail staff walk out over disease fears
Shane O’Riordain, managing director of marketing, regulation and corporate affairs at Royal Mail, said: “Our postmen and postwomen are working very hard across the UK in challenging conditions.
“As we said at the start of the coronavirus crisis, there will be some disruption to services.
“We understand the importance of the postal service in keeping the UK connected at this time.
“We have also listened to our hard-working colleagues who have asked us to ease the additional burden on them if possible. As a result, we are making some temporary changes to postal services.”
Royal Mail said it has been in dialogue with the Government and regulator Ofcom throughout the crisis and will keep the temporary change to postal arrangements under review.
The move was criticised by the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), which represents postal workers.
A CWU spokesman said: “We will be seeking urgent discussions with the Government on this issue.
READ MORE: Royal Mail workers return to ballot for strike action
“The reduction of the Universal Service Obligation was a key factor in our live national strike ballot.
“The last thing we want to do is call strike action at this point but we will not sit back and see our members’ jobs put at threat and the service to the public worsened.”
Last month the union called for households’ deliveries to be cut to three days a week due to coronavirus.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel