Royal Mail claims it's on top of the mammoth seasonal rise in post handled by East Croydon's sorting centre in the build up to Christmas 2001.

It estimates that more than double the number of letters than in a usual month are to flood through the Addiscombe Road office's gates over the four weeks leading up to the big day.

Croydon, Sutton and Bromley residents' 19 million letters will pass through the centre, and to ensure they do get to open this post before Christmas arrives, Royal Mail has added 350 postmen and post sorters to the area's already bulging payroll of 2,341 employees shared by the three boroughs.

Postal volumes will peak around December 17 and 18, as festive well-wishers rush to pillar boxes all over the world to beat the December 21 first class deadline for posting to the UK.

Nationally this year, the festive mail bag is forecast to hit 2.2 billion items compared to 2.1 billion last year.

When MP for Croydon South, Richard Ottaway, went to see for himself how the Addiscombe Road office's postal workers are pulling out all the stops to deliver this years bumper postbag, he disclosed his own personal allegiance to the festive postal rush.

He explained how every Christmas he used to help out as a post man to supplement his student out-goings: "I used to be a postman at Christmas when I was a student in Bristol, which helped finance my education.

"I enjoyed it it was a lot of fun."

He also explained some more practical reasons why he felt it was important to see how the office was getting on at this busy time of year.

"Post is an integral part of Christmas," he said, "There's lots of it and people want to see it delivered on time.

"I'm here to give my support to all the hard working postmen doing their best to deliver.

"They seem to be on the job but there's still a lot to do. I am told anything here today will be out by tomorrow morning."

Steve Fuller, operations manager at the Addiscombe Road centre, said the office adheres to a Minimum Clearance Plan which requires them to get all first class mail to its destination within 48 hours of being posted over the Christmas period.

He said: "What you see here would have been posted yesterday. Our staff are working very hard and I'm very proud of them this year."

But he said the people of Croydon can help him out by posting their cards as early as possible to minimise the last minute rush and any backlog after collections stop on the 21st.

Sorters divide the post into walks the patch covered by a single post man through the day and night.

And at 5am the Croydon postmen arrive at work and spend about three hours sorting their walk into roads and house numbers, matching them with thousands of labelled slots.

Sutton and Bromley post is sent to smaller offices for distribution locally.

Then postmen will spend about four or five hours making deliveries each of them delivering about 2,000 letters and parcels each day.

Post Office Christmas Opening Times

December 24 9am - 12.30pm

December 25 Closed

December 26 Closed

December 27-29 9am - 5.30pm

December 31 9am - 4pm

Royal Mail Customer Service Helpline 08457 740 740

Postcode Enquiry Line 08457 111222

Parcelforce Enquiry Line 0800 224466

Post Office Customer Helpline 08457 223344

December 21, 2001 16:00