Pay back postmasters

AS A former Post Office worker of more than 40 years’ service, both for the Post Office and in the sub Post Office sector, I am very pleased the Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the convicted sub-postmasters.

I was involved in the horizon trials and from the outset it was evident that there were flaws in the system.

For some reason sub offices were not given the same proven system that the Crown Offices used, which many of us thought was strange.

What worries me is that given the large number of sub-postmasters who were seemingly (but not actually) on the fiddle, did it not occur to Post Office Counters management that either there was a serious flaw in their recruitment policy, or something was wrong with the system?

I know of sub-postmasters who produced consistently accurate accounts on the old manual system over a number of years who suddenly started declaring (sometimes large) discrepancies on a regular basis.

As sub-postmasters are responsible for making good any shortages, this became a costly business for them. In the sub-office sector, an office I was area manager for lost £6,000 just by transferring the final manual account on to the computer system.

It took five years to convince Post Office Counters to write off the amount, despite our having proof of what the error was.

All of the sub Post Office workers who were wrongly convicted should be paid compensation relating to the salary for all the time lost since they were forced out of their jobs, plus compensation for losing homes and all the stress incurred.

ROGER WILKS, Solihull. SO Paula Vennells, former Ceo of the Post Office, has finally grown a conscience and resigned from the boards at Dunelm and Morrisons, and stepped down as an ordained Church of england minister.

She should have done this ten years ago and saved the innocent subpostmasters from the trauma of prosecution when the faulty horizon IT system was the real culprit.

Now let her face the ignominy of a court case.

TREVOR COLLINS, Grimsby, Lincs.