The Royal Mail is opening a new sorting centre in West Lothian to help handle the thousands of parcels that will be sent during the festive period.

Around 450 seasonal staff will be hired at the Bathgate site to cope with Christmas.

The temporary centre is one of six that will be opening throughout the UK for the eighth year in a row and will sort a significant proportion of Christmas parcels before they are delivered to the door by Royal Mail's postmen and women.

The other centres will open in Warwickshire, Cardiff, Yorkshire, Lancashire and London and will be staffed by a total of 2700 temporary workers.

They will open from mid-November and will help deal with the tens of millions of parcels sent during the festive period.

Christmas is Royal Mail's busiest time of the year and they handled almost 150 million parcels last December.

A dedicated website for people to apply for the Christmas positions has been launched.