Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a robust second-order numerical scheme for singularly perturbed delay parabolic convection-diffusion initial boundary value problem. Design/methodology/approach For the parabolic convection-diffusion initial boundary value problem, the authors solve the problem numerically by discretizing the domain in the spatial direction using the Shishkin-type meshes (standard Shishkin mesh, Bakhvalov-Shishkin mesh) and in temporal direction using the uniform mesh. The time derivative is discretized by the implicit-trapezoidal scheme, and the spatial derivatives are discretized by the hybrid scheme, which is a combination of the midpoint upwind scheme and central difference scheme. Findings The authors find a parameter-uniform convergent scheme which is of second-order accurate globally with respect to space and time for the singularly perturbed delay parabolic convection-diffusion initial boundary value problem. Also, the Thomas algorithm is used which takes much less computational time. Originality/value A singularly perturbed delay parabolic convection-diffusion initial boundary value problem is considered. The solution of the problem possesses a regular boundary layer. The authors solve this problem numerically using a hybrid scheme. The method is parameter-uniform convergent and is of second order accurate globally with respect to space and time. Numerical results are carried out to verify the theoretical estimates.