As the new Royal Mail Delivery Office in Bradford is unveiled for the first time, reporter Heather Bishop takes a peek inside and looks at what it will mean for Bradford's post.

Before the Royal Mail could put the stamp of approval on their new delivery office they had a major problem. Tyres - hundreds of them.

These had been dumped on the derelict land at Valley Road where the new office was due to be built on former railway sidings.

The tyres filled a three tonne truck before work could begin.

And now, 10 months later, the new £3.7 million Royal Mail Bradford North Delivery Office is up and running, bringing a faster service for thousands of letters in Bradford.

And the Office can boast everything - from the latest hi-tech sorting equipment to tumble dryers for postmen and women to quickly dry out their uniforms in bad weather.

The new building houses a total of 170 postal staff and is expected to handle more than 650,000 letters and packets a week. It will serve 55,000 social and business addresses in Bd2,3,8,9 and 10 postcodes which includes areas such as Eccleshill, Idle, Thackley and Thornbury.

And it means shorter delivery routes for the city's postmen who aim to finish their first delivery in just over two hours - getting all of the mail out before 10am each day.

Colin Roberts, project manager and acting delivery office manager, said: "It started off as a pile of rubble a few months ago and now it's a centre with some of the latest technology.

"This new office has led to a full revision of duties and we reckon that it has speeded up each delivery by 40 minutes.

"The postmen are all transported out to their areas and the mail is sorted into the path that they walk down the road which might not necessarily be in exact numerical order.

"It means that it's much more efficient and people get their mail quicker.

"The postmen then head back to the delivery office where they sort the rest of the post.

"Many people still don't think we have a second post but that's because there is very little mail - in fact 98 per cent of the mail is sent out on the first delivery.

"The second post of the day is taken by van so walking postmen just do one delivery."

The new delivery office has led to the creation of 26 jobs, eleven of them full-time posts.

Other facilities include a pool table, training rooms and a canteen.

All letters and packages are sorted into areas at the Royal Mail office in Forster Square and are then transported to the new delivery office.

They also deal with some more unusual packages as the staff there have found out.

"Some of the more wacky things we get through here include boxes of live crickets which are used to feed reptiles," said Mr Roberts.

"They come in cardboard boxes with ventilation holes and somebody once made the mistake of accidentally opening one of them.

"We could hear crickets all over the building for months as they got into the roof."

The office is part of a number of Royal Mail developments in the city with another delivery office being built on Manchester Road.

It will cover the Bradford South area and is due to be opened next July.

The new delivery office has been built next to the Royal Mail Road Transport Workshop which maintains 350 vehicles used for deliveries in the Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield areas and for those working from the Yorkshire Distribution Centre in Morley.

The move to the new offices will mean that the Forster Square offices will deal with the process and delivery of city centre mail.

Around 150 staff have been transferred to the new site and a shuttle bus service takes them from the city centre to Valley Road.

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