Royal Mail to hire 900 Christmas workers in Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster

Nigel Coleman, an employer account manager for Jobcentre Plus, said 400 jobs each in Sheffield and Rotherham and a further 70 in Doncaster are being created to help Royal Mail deal with the festive rush.

He said the jobs are to be advertised through local job centres from the start of next month, with the sorting office roles due to start in October and run for 12 weeks.

Mr Coleman said: “It is great working for the likes of Royal Mail. For people who perhaps don’t have a brilliant employment history, it opens a door. After you have worked for someone like the Royal Mail, a lot of other employers are more willing to take you on.”

He made the comments as the latest local employment figures for July showed the number of people claiming benefits in Sheffield had dropped by four per cent year-on-year.

There are now 9,375 people claiming either Jobseekers’ Allowance or Universal Credit in the city, a reduction of 430 on July 2015.

Mr Coleman said that, on a local level, the availability of jobs ‘hasn’t been affected at all’ by Brexit.

Nationally, job vacancies were down 7,000 between May and July to 741,000, a period covering the immediate aftermath of Britain’s vote to leave the EU.

Mr Coleman said of the South Yorkshire situation: “It has not affected a single thing. I’m working with large employers on a day-to-day basis and so much work has carried on. We are not seeing any impact in Yorkshire and Humber.”

He said he had received similar positive reports from colleagues across the country. Mr Coleman said Capita still had vacancies in their Dearne Valley call centre after recently launching a recruitment drive for 1,200 permanent workers.

“Obviously for people in Sheffield you do need to get to that area. But the manager that took me around is from Sheffield and she gets the train in, so it is do-able.”