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More than 30 million letters and parcels are now in stuck in the backlog caused by striking postal workers with one depot unable to close its doors as mail piles up, it is claimed.
Thousands of postal workers in London have walked out this week with hundreds of Royal Mail delivery drivers set to stop work next week, ensuring that very little post is moved around the country.
The stoppages have come just as the Communication Workers Union is balloting 121,000 postal workers over plans for a national strike in the run-up to Christmas. The results are due on October 8.
The rolling series of strikes has crippled parts of the network. Since June 19, The Daily Telegraph has calculated that postal workers have been on strike somewhere in the country once every other day.
More than 230 different Royal Mail facilities, including night offices, distribution centres and mail centres, have stopped work on at least one occasion over the past 12 weeks.
The result has been an emerging “mail mountain” at Royal Mail delivery and sorting offices containing more than 30 million items in London alone, according to sources at the Communication Workers Union.
Photographs seen by The Daily Telegraph show mail bags piled up delivery offices in north and east London. In one of the depots, there are so many "cages" of mail that the doors to the delivery office are unable to close.
Millions of cheques, worth hundreds of pounds to each consumer, have been delayed, while credit card companies and banks have been asked to show leniency on customers whose payment is delayed in the post.
Some reports have claimed that Royal Mail has been hiring hundreds of agency workers to help clear the backlog, while scores of managers have been dispatched to a hotel in the north east of England to sort the mail.
The strike has hit mail centres and sorting offices, from the south of England to the north of Scotland.
It is now the worst to hit Royal Mail since 2007 when stoppages at Royal Mail accounted for nearly two thirds of all days lost to strikes in the British economy that year.
Royal Mail disputes the number of letters and parcels in the backlog, suggesting that mail mountain contained nine million letters and parcels - not 30 million.
A Royal Mail spokesman said: “The CWU’s claim about the size of the mail backlog is utter nonsense and the position remains that around nine million letters have been delayed by the union’s localised strikes.”
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