Vennells’ bishop likens damning ITV drama to The Crown

PAULA VENNELLS, the disgraced former Post Office chief executive, should not be judged on an ITV drama that is a “bit like The Crown”, a spokesman for her bishop said yesterday.

Ms Vennells, 65, was ordained as a priest in 2006 and had been an associate minister in the diocese of St Albans while at the same time running the Post office.

She stepped down from her post in 2021 after the Court of Appeal cleared 39 sub-postmasters of any wrongdoing. Ms Vennells is accused along with other Post office bosses of presiding over the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

The case has been thrust back into the limelight by an ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, but a spokesman for the Bishop of St Albans said it would not be right to judge Ms Vennells until all the facts are known in the wake of an ongoing public inquiry.

The spokesman said: “It [the television drama] is a bit like The Crown where it diverges from actual fact into TV.

“The television show has ... diverged from established public fact and that is why we need the appropriate processes to go ahead.”

A disclaimer at the beginning of the programme accepts that some names have been changed and some scenes imagined. Ms Vennells is placed at the centre of the scandal and no other chief executives are included in the drama.

Ms Vennells was chief executive for seven years from 2012 to 2019, but her predecessors oversaw the installation of the Horizon IT system that caused the huge discrepancies in accounting and led to sub-postmasters being wrongly convicted.

The spokesman said the Bishop of St Albans the Rt Rev Alan Smith had been in contact with Ms Vennells and the Church was offering her support. She retains a licence that allows her to perform certain clerical duties but has declined to do so since stepping back in 2019.

‘The television show is a bit like The Crown where it diverges from actual fact into TV’