The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has called on its members who collect, sort and deliver parcels and letters to take further national strike action on the following dates:

• Thursday 13th October 2022
• Thursday 20th October 2022
• Tuesday 25th October 2022
• Monday 28th November 2022

Further dates have also been announced by the CWU for functional strike action on the following:

• Processing, Distribution, International, Collections, Admin: 3rd, 9th, 15th, 24th November and 1st December 2022
• Delivery: 4th, 10th, 16th, 25th November and 2nd December 2022
• Network: 2nd, 8th, 14th, 23rd, 30th November 2022

Royal Mail is ready to talk further with the CWU to try and avert industrial action. We’re sorry this strike action is likely to cause you some disruption. We will be working to get our services back to normal as quickly as possible.

Royal Mail has well-developed contingency plans, which we will be updating over the next few days to respond to the new dates, but we cannot fully replace the daily efforts of our frontline workforce. We’ll be doing what we can to keep services running, but you should expect significant disruption on dates when strike action is taking place.

There’s more information online at royalmail.com/latest-news but we wanted to provide you with some of the important information, directly.

Parcel and Letter Deliveries

On days when strike action is taking place:

• We will deliver as many Special Delivery Guaranteed parcels as possible. We will prioritise and deliver as many Special Delivery Guaranteed items as resources allow. We cannot however guarantee delivery by 9am or 1pm next day, so we’re making changes to our delivery guarantee for items posted from Thursday 29 September, up to and including items sent on Saturday 1 October 2022. Customers will not be able to claim for delays to items during this period. Further information around how this impacts future strike dates will be communicated closer to the dates.
• We will deliver as many Tracked 24 parcels as possible including prioritising delivery of Covid-19 test kits and medical prescription items wherever possible. However, significantly reduced resources mean there will be a delay to some Tracked 24 items during strike action.
• On strike days, we will not be delivering letters (with exception of Special Delivery)

Other items posted the day before, during strike action or on the days after any strike action will be subject to delay.

Business Collections 

We won’t be able to provide a collection service to business customers on days when strikes are taking place. We’re asking customers to post before strike days or hold items until after strike action finishes.

Business collections will resume on the next working day after a national strike day.

We are unable to accept bookings for additional or one-off collections on the day of strike action or for the next working day

Delivery Offices and Customer Service Points

Delivery Offices and Customer Service Points will be closed on days when strike action is taking place. Customers will not be able to collect or drop off items on these dates.

If you usually drop off bags of items to Customer Service Points, you can take them to a Post Office branch or to one of c1700 Collect+ sites which will accept Royal Mail items on days when strikes are taking place. You can check your nearest available Collect+ drop off here.

Delivery Offices and Customer Service Points will reopen the day after strike action has finished.

Post Offices

Post Offices will be open as usual, collections by Royal Mail from Post Offices will be limited on the days of strike action. Customers can still collect Local Collect items at Post Offices on strike days.

Getting services back to normal after strike action

We want to get your services back to normal as quickly as possible after any strike action. We’ll be increasing our network capacity and using additional resources to assist with this.

Collections and deliveries will resume the day after strike action finishes, including accelerating the delivery of NHS and healthcare letters, and critical Government mailings in the days following strike action.

Useful links:

• You can find the latest industrial action information at https://www.royalmail.com/latest-news 
• You can sign up for proactive service updates at https://www.royalmail.com/serviceupdates

We are working to minimise disruption and to get your services back to normal as quickly as possible.

Kind regards,
Royal Mail
Email Address: emarketing@royalmail.com