Christopher Head
Youngest sub-postmaster offered 10 per cent of requested compensation
A victim of the Post Office scandal who was once Britain’s youngest subpostmaster claims he has been offered just 10 per cent of the compensation he requested from the government scheme.
Christopher Head went from delivering newspapers at his local Post Office in West Bolden, near Newcastle, at age 12, to working behind the counter serving customers at 13, to eventually buying the branch in 2006 when he turned 18.
Little was the teenager to know that his business venture would eventually lead to his world being turned upside down.
Mr Head’s tenure ended in 2015, when he became one of more than 700 subpostmasters accused of fraud and theft by the Post Office owing to losses caused by its faulty Horizon IT system.
He was suspended and placed under criminal investigation for almost six months, before the Post Office dropped his case without giving a reason.
The Post Office proceeded to try to recover the shortfalls, which totalled more than £88,000, through civil proceedings, but Mr Head’s case was eventually dropped after the High Court found that “bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system caused discrepancies in postmasters’ branch accounts”.
Despite escaping a conviction, Mr Head said the case left him and his family’s reputation in the local community in ruins.
He said: “It was covered in the local press and it hugely damaged my reputation. It’s terrible to go from being the centre of your community in the Post Office to have that sort of stigma over you to have done something that wrong.
“A very small number of people were supportive but there’s always going to be something in the back of people’s minds because the Post Office was such a trusted institution.
“That obviously made it very difficult for me in the community.”
He said he began to withdraw and not leave the house, “even though I knew I had done nothing wrong”.
Mr Head applied to the Government’s GLO compensation scheme, announced in March 2022, which is open to postmasters who were not prosecuted and are therefore not eligible to seek compensation from the Post Office.
The scheme aims to “deliver compensation to eligible postmasters that is full and fair, restoring postmasters back into the position they would have been in had it not been for the Horizonrelated actions of the Post Office.”
He says he received an offer on Dec 28 which was “barely 10 per cent” of the sum he had claimed, which he cannot disclose for confidentiality reasons. He is planning to appeal on advice from lawyers.
“It is very clear that the scheme is flawed and not fit for purpose,” he said. “If they think anyone is going to settle on those terms it’s crazy.”
He added that the Government offering 10 per cent of a victim’s claim is “clearly not going to return you to the position you were in”.
The Department for Business and Trade, which runs the compensation scheme, said it could not comment on individual cases.