Ex-postal staff in bid to clear names

FORMER subpostmasters who say they were wrongly implicated over the Post Office’s defective Horizon IT system have said they feel their bid to overturn their convictions represents “the beginning of the end”.

Postal workers attending the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday described the relief of having their appeals heard.

Janet Skinner, 50, from Hull, who was jailed for nine months in 2007 after pleading guilty to false accounting, said: “It feels like the beginning of the end here today.” The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred the cases of 42 former subpostmasters to the Court of Appeal last year, following a landmark civil case against the Post Office.

They had all been prosecuted by Post Office Limited between 2000 and 2013.

Former Gloucestershire subpostmaster Nicki Arch said yesterday: “I was one of the first. I was part of the rollout for the Horizon system in 1999 and in 2001 my case was heard at Bristol Crown Court.

“Obviously, I totally refused to do a deal, although I was offered one, and had my own barristers and I pleaded not guilty.

“I was in front of a jury, had a full four-day trial and was proved innocent.”

Ms Arch, who was working at a branch in Chalford Hill in Stroud at the time, added: “I was proved innocent in 2001 ... and the Post Office did not learn a single thing. They carried on and carried on and I got nothing.

“I lost my house, I lost my business, I lost my health and everything else and I thought, ‘Well, I might just save one person from going through what I did’. Instead, over 1,000 others have gone through it.”

Ms Arch claimed: “They (the Post Office) knew on the first rollout, on the first crown court hearing, that the equipment was at fault and there was no-one, including myself, that had done anything wrong and they carried on anyway.”

The hearing is set to conclude on Thursday or Friday.

A ruling is expected at a later date.