MORE than 23 million letters and cards passed through Southampton's mail centre during a record-breaking Christmas period.

The bumper festive season saw records smashed at the centre, with five per cent more mail than last year and three per cent more than expected.

On December 11 alone, a massive two million items of post passed through the centre at Mitchell Way, Eastleigh.

Steve Harvey, mail centre manager, said: "It was very busy. This year was one of our busiest.

"Because of the message that went out with the rail disruption, everybody posted early."

In the run-up to Christmas, all 400 staff worked and 250 casuals were called in to help deal with the mail deluge.

Mr Harvey said: "They were amazing. They recognise Christmas is a big pressure period. They know what to expect and knuckle down and do the business.

"There is a tremendous amount of pressure on them all, but they all keep their spirits up and keep going.

"I'm pleased Christmas is only once a year."

Planning for the Christmas post starts in August. This year, the centre predicted 22.4million letters and cards. The actual figure was 23.1 million.

In an average week, 3.8 million items pass through the depot. On the week beginning December 11, there were 8.5 million items going through the centre.

Mr Harvey said the service was helped because people acknowledged the need to post early because of the rail crisis.

He said: "The biggest problem is potentially miss-sorting mail. We have a system in place to get that back to the right office as quickly as possible.

"But if people used postcodes, we wouldn't have a problem at all."

Speaking about this Christmas, he said: "We have been a lot more successful because we had the mail early."

Looking to the future, he said: "Post early for Christmas. It gives us a challenge in the early week, but we like that."