Royal Mail to recruit 2,400 seasonal staff for Shropshire and Mid Wales

As part of its annual festive season recruitment campaign, the company is taking on 2,405 seasonal posts at its centres in Wolverhampton, Chester, Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent.

The company is looking to recruit a total of 19,000 temporary workers across the country to support its 123,000 permanent postmen and women.

The new recruits will help to sort Christmas cards and parcels before they go to about 1,400 delivery offices for postmen and women to take out on their rounds.

As well as jobs helping sort the masses of Christmas post in mail, distribution and data centres across the UK, Parcelforce Worldwide is also recruiting seasonal workers, including drivers.

In Wolverhampton, 815 positions with Royal Mail are available – 175 in the mail sorting centre and 640 in the West Midlands parcel sorting centre, which will also be set up in the city. There are also 430 roles in Birmingham up for grabs.

The company is looking for a further 240 seasonal workers at its Chester mail centre, and 920 "address detectives" who will be based in Stoke-on-Trent to find the correct destination for poorly addressed letters.

There has been no mail sorting office in Shropshire since the one in Shrewsbury closed in March 2013. The mail centre had been in Shrewsbury since 1880.

Sue Whalley, Royal Mail's chief operations officer, said: "Every Christmas, we make a substantial commitment in additional resources to handle the festive mailbag, including the recruitment of thousands of temporary workers." The positions on offer are across a variety of shifts from mid-November to early January.

This week it was confirmed that Royal Mail will not be delivering on December 26 this year. And as the bank holiday is the following Monday it means there will be no Royal Mail post and parcel deliveries from Christmas Day until December 29. For more information on the jobs available visit www.royalmailgroup.com/xmasjobs