These are the recommended last posting dates before Christmas

With Christmas just around the corner, many people are preparing to send Christmas cards and presents to friends and family all over the country, and world.

Today, marked the busiest day of the year for Norwich's Royal Mail centre as they processed 1.3 million letters and packages.

Normally they would typically process 7000,000 in one day.

The majority of letter processing is done by a fast paced sorting machine that sorts up to 48,000 letters every hour.

Royal Mail have set their recommended posting dates to get letters and parcels to their destination in time.

For UK service.

Wednesday, December 20 for 2nd class and Royal Mail signed for 2nd class.

Thursday, December 21 for 1st class and Royal Mail signed for 1st class.

Thursday, December 21 for guaranteed Royal Mail special delivery.

Friday, December 22 for guaranteed special delivery on a Saturday.

They advise to make sure items are wrapped and packaged properly to avoid damage and to use clearly labelled envelopes and always include the postcode and a return address.

This year, Royal Mail in Norwich has taken on 182 Christmas Casuals who are employed on temporary contracts. They will work alongside the 281 permanent staff in the centre.

Royal Mail spend a lot of time and money around Christmas to make the service as reliable as possible. It includes the training of all the Christmas casuals.

Phil Jones, Norwich plant manager, said: 'This is a really busy day for us, it's the same time every year where people put thought into Christmas cards.

'We have a sorting machine that scans the postcode and places letters in the right slot. If the machine cannot read the postcode, that's where our manual sorters come in.

'Everyone here gets in the Christmas spirit, they're all committed to the job and customer quality. Our customer quality is above target for the NR postcode which is really good.