Last post will be end of an era at Shrewsbury mail centre

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2013 ... il-centre/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It will be the end of an era at Shropshire’s only Royal Mail sorting office this Christmas.

For it will be the last time the region’s festive haul of mail will be sorted there.

The sorting office at the historic mail centre in Castle Foregate in Shrewsbury is closing at the end of March.

Only delivery and collection will remain at the site in Castlefields. Royal Mail bosses say it is because there has been a large fall in the amount of mail being sent.

It means that after that date, any mail destined for Shropshire and Mid Wales which has been posted in postboxes will now be sorted at Chester, Wolverhampton or Cardiff. It will then be sent back to Shrewsbury for delivery.


Brian Nightingale is Shrewsbury’s mail centre manager. He has worked for Royal Mail since 1977.

“It will be the end of an era,” says Mr Nightingale, who first started out as a postman. “And it is sad to see it go.”

The sorting office is currently being phased out and is due to be completely closed at the end of March or beginning of April.

Staff who work in the sorting office have been offered jobs at the other three locations.

“The public will not see any change. The collection and the deliveries will be the same and the quality will be the same,” adds Mr Nightingale

Kieran Brittain is the delivery office manager at the site, which has been processing mail since around 1880.

He explained the changes: “The mail centre part of the organisation is Shrewsbury will move off to Wolverhampton, Chester and Cardiff, taking the SY, LD and TF postcodes.

“Sorting and delivering will still be done from Shrewsbury and collection of mail will still be done from Shrewsbury so there will be no change in the quality of service that people will get.

“They will still get their mail delivered from Shrewsbury.”

Before the sorting office ceases in Shrewsbury, the staff are knuckling down to the festive rush.

Christmas is one of the busiest times of year for the mail centre. It is literally flooded with thousands upon thousands more cards and parcels than the rest of the year.

All annual leave is cancelled during December and reserve staff are drafted into help get the mail out. The operation also goes 24 hour to cope with the demand.

Mr Brittain says: “On an average week we will deliver around 500,000 items. This week we are looking to deliver just short of 800,000 items.

“That breaks down to on a busy day we will normally deal with about 120,000 items within Shrewsbury delivery office.

“On a quiet day during the summer, we will deliver a 60,000 items, so there is a big increase over Christmas.

“Our parcels have gone up by 30 per cent over Christmas so we have gone from about 7,000 items a day to about 10-13,000 items a day.”

Mr Brittain said he had noticed a decline in the amount of mail being sent. “People do still send Christmas cards,” he said. “But if you go back five years ago, there were an awful lot more. People these days keep in touch regularly by texts or emails. It is not like yesteryear.”

He said that for some of the postmen in Shrewsbury, this Christmas would be the end of an era.

“This will be the last Christmas sorting the posted Christmas mail. And for some of the postman it will certainly be the end of an era.”

The plans to close the sorting office were first put forward after it was revealed mail items posted to addresses in the area from other parts of the country had fallen by 24.3 per cent in five years.

Mike Norman, a Royal Mail spokesman, said at the time: “The closure of Shrewsbury Mail Centre is part of a major transformation and programme to modernise Royal Mail.

“This move is an important part of our programme to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of our operation by making the best possible use of our buildings, machinery and resources.”

The changes to the service in Shropshire and Mid Wales mean that letters with the SY postcode will be sorted at Chester; those postcoded TF are to be dealt with at Wolverhampton, while letters sent to an LD postcode in Knighton, Llandrindod Wells, Builth Wells and Brecon will be sorted at Cardiff.

Shrewsbury is the largest delivery office in the county with other offices located at Tweedale in Telford, Oakengates, Ludlow, Craven Arms, Oswestry, Whitchurch and Market Drayton.