The Royal Mail have told post offices to begin taking some international mail following a cyber incident which led to serious disruption.

After a cyber incident on 11 Jan, Royal Mail issued a memo to post offices telling them to stop taking all international post. They instructed retailers to instead offer customers use of Parcelforce Worldwide, with a discount provided by Royal Mail, or other parcel services.

Late last week, Royal Mail announced that “workaround” measures were in use. These bypassed the systems which had been hit by the incident. Staff have now begun to work on the backlog of parcels.

On 23 January, Royal Mail issued an International Incident Bulletin on their help centre.

It said: “We are making good progress in despatching items that are already in our network across all our services. Please note you may see less tracking information than usual as we continue to restore our services.”

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Retailers can still offer a discount with Parcelforce Worldwide to customers. Royal Mail has promised further updates.

Royal Mail also said that International Standard, International Economy, International Business Standard (untracked) and International Business Economy personal correspondence letters were now resumed to all destinations. This does not include letters which require a customs declaration.

All parcels or letters which contain goods require a customs declaration.

Post from Northern Ireland to Ireland is also fully functional again. Most services to Ireland remain unavailable in the rest of the UK.

Royal Mail’s statement added: “Our teams are continuing to work around the clock to resolve this disruption and we would like to sincerely apologise to impacted customers.”