Residents have experienced severe delays seeing first-class post arriving six weeks late, as the Royal Mail East Dulwich office is named one of the most impacted due to COVID-19, according to the Royal Mail website.

The delays have been ongoing over the Christmas period as the new COVID-19 variant escalates, causing a heavy impact on staff shortages because of the isolation rules. The Royal Mail postal service updates their website daily to regularly notify customers of the impacted areas.

One update said: “In a small number of local offices this may temporarily not be possible due to local issues such as COVID-related self isolation, high levels of sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors. In those cases we will rotate deliveries to minimise the delay to individual customers. We also provide targeted support to those offices to address their challenges and restore our service to the high standard our customers would normally receive. We’re sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.”

Dulwich residents have voiced their complaints as the Royal Mail admits to delays at the East Dulwich delivery office. Margaret Ricketts from East Dulwich posted a complaint to Facebook: “How can it be acceptable for 1st class post to go from 24 hours to 6 weeks to save money? The CEO needs to be sacked. I’m amazed this isn’t in the papers.”

The delays have been occurring since the beginning of December according to Dulwich resident, Natasha Garland on an East Dulwich forum. She said: “Xmas cards which I won’t be able to enjoy from family and vouchers from a certain supermarket along with a few free items as a Christmas thank you for shopping all year round, are now all out of date and can’t be used!! I’m also still missing parcels ordered early December!”

The same thing happened in December 2020 when the Dulwich postal services by the Royal Mail experienced similar issues with high demand and COVID-19.