Royal Mail and Angard Staffing refuse to pay qualified agency workers the Christmas Bonus every year because they (unfortunately, correctly) expect that nobody knows that they deserve to be paid. It looks like you have to fight for you right to be paid what is rightfully yours (and legally as well). Royal Mail is a company who willfully violate the law of the land to increase its profits and earn the shareholders more money.
Both companies have been found to break the law in this respect in 2017 (in regards of the Christmas Bonus of 2016) but they still refuse to pay it: they have not paid it (not backdated it) for the year 2016, they have not paid it in December 2017 and they have not paid it in December 2018.
Only the claimants involved in the case (two individuals) received this payment so far for all three years (2016, 2017, 2018), rest of you can forget it - they will not pay you because Royal Mail believe that you are not going to do anything about it, as you may not even know about it in the first place (about your eligibility - they will obviously not inform you about it, because they do not want to pay you). And they were correct about it in year 2017 - it is too late now for you to do anything about it. Regarding year 2018 it is not too late yet but you need to hurry up to lodge a claim at your local Employment Tribunal against both Royal Mail and Angard Staffing.
Writing to them will not get you anywhere because they will just ignore you or let you wait forever for their response and they have to wait only 3 months from the date when the Christmas Bonus got paid to their permanent staff (21 December 2018) and after that time (which will be around 21 March 2019) you will run out of time to make the claim to the Employment Tribunal (maximum three months back from the time a breach of your rights have occurred).
If anybody is willing to make an effort to fight for their rights with regards of this bonus, the claim in which Royal Mail Group Limited and Angard Staffing Solutions Limited have lost on the point of eligibility of agency workers to receive the Christmas Bonus have been adjudged at Leeds Employment Tribunal in 2017 (case number: 1801535/16, 1801536/16, 1801608/16, 1801609/16).
Unfortunately, this case has not been published online by the Employment Tribunal and it is a shame. You can only find other parts of this claim online - the less interesting ones (it was a complicated claim consisting of various other issues as well):
https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal- ... and-others" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Royal Mail and Angard Staffing also lost the second case regarding 2017 Christmas Bonus (the first one was about the year 2016). Again, it was the same two individuals from Leeds Mail Centre and Royal Mail once again lost the case about the Christmas Bonus, this time for the year 2017. It has been adjudged at Leeds Employment Tribunal on 16 November 2018 and the "Reasons" were issued on 29 November 2018 (case numbers: 1805244/2018 & 1805245/2018). This one was actually published in its entirety on the Employment Tribunal's website, so you can see for yourself:
https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal- ... 05245-2018" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Enjoy your reading and as Jim Sterling from YouTube says: "Thank god for me!"