ROYAL mail bosses in Worcester employed an extra 150 staff over Christmas to deal with the estimated 7.5 million items passing through each week.

Normally the Worcester mail centre on Wainwright Road would handle 4.5 million items per week.

The Worcester News decided to find out how well the centre coped at Christmas and see how many first class post items would arrive the following day.

We selected destinations from Droitwich to Doncaster and posted 20 first class letters at the same time in the postbox near the cathedral.

Recipients of the letters were then asked to note down the date it was posted through their door - and contact us with the results.

Of the total sent on Friday, December 15, at 5.45pm, 19 got to their intended addresses within a week - with just one going Awol with one posting day left before the big day.

But surprisingly, of the three sent to addresses within the city of Worcester, only one arrived the following day and the other two, posted to St John's, arrived the following Wednesday and Thursday.

Worcester Royal Mail centre manager Carol Bell described the findings as "interesting".

She said: "Ideally we would have loved the letters to get to them on Saturday as they were posted first class.

"But all-in-all its quite a good result. That is acceptable to me at this time of year, but the main thing is all the mail that came into the centre has been dispatched.

"Plus, I'm glad all the mail in the city has been delivered," she added.

Letters arriving the quickest, the next day to being posted, were in Droitwich, Northwick, Worcester and Tenbury Wells.

These were followed on Monday, December 18, in Doncaster, Ludlow and Putney, in London.

Mrs Bell said in the Birmingham, Hereford and Worcester area they had collected 40 million items of mail and delivered 90 million in the past three weeks.

She said she found it interesting that while all mail was sent at the same time and from the same point in the city, the mail delivered around Worcester did not arrive at the same time.

WHERE AND WHEN POST CAME

Where the letters posted on Friday, December 15, were sent and when they were received: Northwick, Worcester - Saturday.

Droitwich - Saturday.

Tenbury Wells - Saturday.

Doncaster - Monday.

Putney, London - Monday.

Ludlow - Monday.

Northants - Monday.

Cambridge - Tuesday.

Banbury - Tuesday.

Redditch - Tuesday.

Wigan - Tuesday.

Warwick - Tuesday.

Solihull - Tuesday.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne - Tuesday.

St John's, Worcester - Wednesday.

Stoke-On-Trent - Wednesday.

St John's, Worcester - Thursday.

Bedford - Friday.

Gloucester - Not delivered by Friday, December 22.

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