It stole my job, my house, my freedom and my health Glitch in the system
Unlocking the front door of my Post Office, I waved to a couple of my cheerful locals queueing outside. ‘Morning Jan,’ they chimed, following me inside.
It was 2000 and I’d worked at various Post Offices around Hull since February 1994, working my way up to the sub postmistress role.
The job fitted in perfectly around my kids, who were then 6 and 3.
And I gave the role my all, forming great relationships with my customers.
‘Where would we be without you?’ they’d say.
Before 2000, we did the accounting by hand.
But now, Post Office bosses told me a new countrywide computer system was being installed. It was called Horizon. ‘It’ll make things much easier,’ they said.
Horizon was an electronic till, that fed into a network.
We’d input our numbers and manage our accounts at the push of a button.
At first, it seemed straightforward.
Only, as time went on, the system told me I was missing significant sums of cash.
Ringing
Horizon, I was told I was the only one having problems.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I fretted, recalculating my figures over and over.
Before Horizon, my numbers were always perfect.
Then, in 2006, I was visited by two managers from the Post Office who confirmed a problem with my cash flow.
They closed the store to investigate, suspended me from the job I loved.
And days later, I was brought in for an interview.
‘You’re missing £59,000,’ the managers told me. ‘What?’ I gasped.
A huge sum – I couldn’t understand it.
And my contract with the Post Office was terminated.
I hadn’t stolen anything. And where was this so-called windfall? I drove an old car, hadn’t taken the kids on holiday for years. Worse still, the Post Office blamed me for the loss. ‘I haven’t stolen anything!’ I pleaded to managers. But it got worse. The Post Office was taking me to court on charges of theft and false accounting. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ I wept.
As my court case loomed, I couldn’t work. Unable to pay my mortgage, I sold my house. ‘It won’t be for long,’ I promised my kids, then 17 and 14, as we heaved boxes into a run-down rental. To fight my case, I hired a solicitor using my savings. But everyone trusted Horizon’s figures, so, despite my innocence,
I was persuaded to make a plea deal. Admitting to submitting false accounting info, but not guilty to theft. ‘It guarantees you won’t be sent to prison,’ said my legal team. But they were wrong. On 2 February 2007, I stood in the dock at Hull Crown Court. With stern eyes, the judge read his decision.
‘I’m sentencing you to nine months in prison,’ he said.
I waited for him to add ‘suspended for…’
But the words never came. I heard the lock of the dock click, and turned to see a prison officer waiting for me with handcuffs.
‘This can’t be happening,’ I whimpered.
At prison, I was stripsearched and put in a cell.
Sobbing, I couldn’t believe I was now a prisoner, locked up with real criminals.
The following day, I was all over the newspapers.
This woman stole your pension, the headline read.
‘Are you that woman who pinched from the Post Office?’ other inmates asked.
Some had committed awful crimes, but they deemed me the lowest of the low.
My kids moved in with their dad, and I didn’t let them visit.
Couldn’t bear for them to
see me in prison clothes.
I kept my head down and was released after ten weeks.
But life on the outside wasn’t easy either.
Customers that I’d served for decades avoided me in the street.
Suspicious, disappointed eyes followed me everywhere, and it was months before I found another admin job.
I fell into a deep depression and thought about taking my own life.
The mental toll impacted me physically too, and in September 2008
I was rushed to A&E after having a suspected stroke.
Waking the next day with no feeling below my neck, I realised I was paralysed.
‘You have transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord,’ a doctor told me.
Docs thought the stress triggered it and I spent four months in hospital learning to walk again.
When I returned home, I needed a wheelchair and relied on my kids and a carer.
I had lost my livelihood, my house and now my physical independence.
As I tried to rebuild my life, I thought I was alone in my plight.
But in 2010, I spotted a story in the newspaper about a woman accused of theft by the Post Office.
She was represented by a group called Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance.
‘Is this Alan Bates?’ I asked, ringing the man who was leading the group.
‘How can I help?’ he said.
He invited me to a meeting along with other people who’d also been wrongly accused by the Post Office. Expecting a few of us, I was stunned to see around 50 postmasters gathered in the Fenny Compton village hall in Warwickshire.
All said Horizon showed a shortfall in their accounts.
All were wrongly accused of things they hadn’t done.
And all were told the same thing.
Nobody else has had this accounting problem.
As Alan and our group fought for justice, more people came forward.
It emerged that 900 workers were victims of private prosecutions by the Post Office.
A shocking 236 people jailed for false accounting, fraud or theft.
Four postmasters took their own lives, countless others were left bankrupt after being contractually forced to repay shortfalls totalling tens of thousands. Lives torn apart, like mine. In 2019, 550 of us agreed a £57.8 million settlement with the Post Office.
It’s now known Horizon’s £1 billion IT system was riddled with bugs.
The glitches resulted in the faulty data and apparent account shortfalls.
In 2021, my conviction was quashed, and to date 93 convictions have been overturned by the courts.
Since the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office shone a light on our turmoil, more action has been taken.
New government legislation to clear hundreds wrongly convicted in the scandal is expected to come into effect in July, and a public inquiry continues.
As more of the Post Office’s grubby secrets are dug up, we hope those responsible are held accountable and we’ll be compensated.
It’s been over 20 years, and we still need answers.
It’s the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history.
And our fight goes on…
RIGHT THE WRONGS A Post Office spokesperson said, ‘‘We’re acutely aware of the devastating human cost of the scandal. We’re doing all we can to right the wrongs of the past as far as that is possible, and offers of compensation totalling more than £130 million have been made to date. We fully share the aims of the current public inquiry, set up to establish what went wrong in the past and the accountability for it.’
This woman stole your pension, headlines read
● Anyone who believes they may have been affected and who has not yet been contacted by the Post Office can email disclosure@postoffice. co.uk.