The Royal Mail is temporarily halting its Saturday delivery service because of the pandemic but services will continue as normal from Monday to Friday.

UK's postal service has admitted it's struggling due to "significantly high" staff absence rates, and as such it's scaling back some of its services.

This means that from May 2, it will temporarily stop delivering letters on a Saturday.

Special delivery, tracked, and most other parcels will, however, continue to be delivered from Monday to Saturday across the country.

In a statement the Royal Mail issued the following:

Temporary change to postal arrangements on Saturdays

Our postmen and postwomen are working very hard across the UK in challenging conditions.

As we said at the start of the coronavirus crisis, there will be some disruption to services. Relevant factors include high levels of coronavirus-related absences and necessary social distancing measures.

We understand the importance of the postal service in keeping the UK connected at this time. We have also listened to our hard-working colleagues who have asked us to ease the additional burden on them if possible. As a result, we are making some temporary changes to postal services.

From 2 May we will temporarily no longer deliver letters on a Saturday. We will continue to provide a letter delivery service from Monday to Friday as normal.

The majority of parcel services will be delivered on a Saturday including 1st and 2nd Class Parcels, Royal Mail Tracked 24 and 48, Royal Mail Tracked Returns, Special Delivery Guaranteed and International tracked services.

Customers should continue to post both letters and parcels as usual on Saturday. We will continue our Saturday collections from businesses, post offices and post boxes as normal.

Saturday collections from businesses, Post Offices and postboxes will also continue as normal. Royal Mail says it will keep the measure "under review".

Special delivery guaranteed by 9am the next working day has already been pushed back to 12pm the next working day, while special delivery guaranteed by 1pm the next working day has been pushed back to by 9pm the next working day.

The Royal Mail is also releasing 12 stamps to mark the upcoming 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two