Rule 1.42 sets out the deemed delivery dates for documents issued by post, and as you are aware documents issued by 1st class post are treated as being delivered on
the second business day after posting, and those issued by 2nd class post are treated as being delivered on the fourth business day after posting. That deemed delivery date is rebuttable though, so if you have evidence that the document was received by all recipients prior to the deemed date of delivery, you could use that as the actual date of delivery. Conversely, if there is a known postal strike on a business day, then you know that the document cannot actually be delivered on that day and also that it will not progress through the postal system on that day either, hence pushing back the actual date of delivery by at least a day. As a result, we think that you should not count known postal strike days when calculating the number of business days you allow where you are using delivery by post.
There is a strike today, Friday, 25 August, and the next strike is planned for Wednesday, 31 August. So if a document is posted 1st class on Tuesday, 30 August, treat it as being deemed delivered on Friday, 2 September rather than Thursday, 1 September as would normally be the case. That is on the basis that it is appropriate to exclude from the calculation the strike day Wednesday, 31 August when you know that the post is not being processed.
