Sir – On Sunday, September 7, East Oxford Delivery Office began a pilot of Sunday opening. The initiative is designed to make it easier for online shoppers not at home during the day to get their parcels.

The East Oxford delivery office was open six days a week. This initiative extends the opening hours to seven days a week including between 12pm and 4pm on Sundays. This is part of a national pilot involving 100 delivery offices with the highest parcels volumes across England, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland. This is part of an ongoing programme by Royal Mail to be more customer responsive and provide more options for people to receive items they have ordered online. The investment in extended opening hours builds on the choices already available to people to receive their parcels.

These include:

  • Teaming up with Post Office to make the UK’s largest click-and-collect service available to 20,000 SME contract customers to offer to their shoppers
  • Our delivery-to-neighbour initiative enabling postmen and women to deliver a parcel to a neighbouring address if no one is at home to receive it
  • Later opening on Wednesday evenings for almost half of our 1,400 delivery offices
  • Free redelivery to their home or a neighbour for customers not at home when delivery is attempted via www.royalmail.com/redelivery
  • The launch of a Sunday delivery service by Parcelforce Worldwide, Royal Mail Group’s express parcels business for online shoppers through participating e-retailers.

I am delighted that this office has been chosen to pilot the new service. I hope that customers will find it very useful and will make use of it.

Manjit Sandhu, Royal Mail East Oxford delivery office manager, Oxford