MORE than 147 extra members of staff have been taken on in the Swindon postal area to deal with the Christmas rush.
That is on top of the 971 sorters and delivery people who normally man the 24 hour operation.
The massive surge in Christmas mail being posted means that even the state of the art sorting machines are not fast enough and some have to be sorted by hand.
David Wright, production control manager at the sorting office in Dorcan, said: "We have to rely on the staff at Christmas. Their goodwill and having a good relationship with them is even more important at this time of year. They have done superbly, and this is by far the best mail office I have ever worked in."
Mail is taken directly from the post box to the sorting office in Dorcan.
The first class mail arrives into the sorting office between 2pm and 7pm in the evening. It has to be processed by 9pm the same day.
Eighty per cent of the mail, including thousands of Christmas cards, goes through the state of the art sorting machines, called IMP's (Integrated Mail Processors).
The IMP sorts more than 30,000 letters and cards per hour and only needs four members of staff to operate it.
But at the busiest times, only the first class mail goes through the machines, with the rest of the mail getting sorted manually.
It sorts the letters by thickness and anything more than six millimetres thick will get sorted by hand.
As the mail passes through the machine each letter is scanned and a picture is taken. Addresses that cannot be read by the machines have to be read manually.
A roomful of administrators tap in the correct postcodes for the letters rejected by the machine.
Mail is then separated into delivery areas and after being sorted into a breakdown of the whole country, it is then dispatched to the delivery areas.
Friday, December 21 is the latest cards should be posted to make the last delivery on Monday, December 24.
The last collection before Christ-mas will be at noon on Monday, December 24.
Collections will resume as normal from Thursday, December 27.
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