Serving Legal Documents and the Strike Action of Royal Mail Staff 1
Serving Legal Documents and the Strike Action of Royal Mail Staff

Royal Mail has advised that due to strike action being taken by members of The Communications Workers Union (CWU), who work for Royal Mail and Parcelforce Worldwide, there may be disruption to letters and parcel services on the following dates:

• Friday 26th August 2022
• Wednesday 31st August 2022
• Thursday 8th September 2022
• Friday 9th September 2022

We have included some additional information below along with top tips to help you during this period of disruption.

Whilst Post Office has confirmed it is not part of this dispute, a very small number of branches may also be impacted by industrial action being taken in Post Office on Friday 26th August and Saturday 27th August. You can check this on Royal Mails website on the day.

You can continue to send your letters and parcels through Drop & Go at our branches and we advise that you check our Branch Finder for the latest on branch opening times.

Please note that some mail deliveries may be delayed reaching their final destination including those posted the day before and on the day of industrial action. Timed delivery guarantees will be suspended for items sent the day before, during strike action and until services are back to normal.

What does this mean?

This means that landlords, agents and law firms may need to use alternative postal services during this strike action when serving legal documents. The alternative would be to provide additional notice periods when serving legal notices to take the delay of service of the notice into account.

The Court rules on serving legal documents under Civil Procedure Rule Part 6 remain unaffected, however this does not mean that a Court will enforce those rules where issues as to any delay of service is raised by an opposing party.

As for civil proceedings that have been issued in the Courts, Claimants will need to take into account any delay of service of the claim form on the Defendant(s) before assessing whether the Defendant(s) have failed to file a response to the claim within the applicable time limits under Civil Procedure Rule Part 16, which is usually 14 days from the date the claim form is served on the Defendant.

Royal Mail and Parcelforce have confirmed they will resume normal delivery and collection services on the next working day.

Top tips for sending via Drop & Go:
• Pre-plan any posting of items – do you know in advance what you will be sending? If so, send them earlier if you can
• Advise your customers there may be a delay to postal services over this period
• Your local branch will be able to help with queries you may have on posting times however, if your local Post Office branch does have to stop accepting mail as it has reached capacity or is closed, please visit Post Office Branch Finder to find another branch that offers the Drop & Go service (97% of branches offer this service)

For more information please visit:

www.postoffice.co.uk/industrial-action

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Parcelforce.com/latest-news