Post Office faced with string of staff complaints
Senior company executives subject to grievances amid news that boss Nick Read’s deputy is to stand aside
POST OFFICE bosses have been hit with a string of formal complaints over their conduct, The Telegraph can reveal, with nine grievances raised about executives under the leadership of chief executive Nick Read.
Data released under Freedom of Information laws show that nine formal grievances have been filed against members of the Post Office’s group executive, its most-senior leaders, since Mr Read took charge in 2019.
It comes as the Post Office’s senior ranks face more turbulence as Mr Read’s deputy leaves the taxpayer-owned company. The Telegraph has learnt Owen Woodley, the Post Office’s deputy chief executive, will leave this summer after less than a year.
Mr Read announced the departure to staff last week. He said Mr Woodley, who has been at the Post Office for eight years and was made deputy chief last July, had “personal plans for the future”.
There is no suggestion Mr Woodley’s departure is related to any of the complaints that have been made against senior staff.
News of the grievances reported against executives comes as the Post Office grapples with the Horizon IT scandal that saw hundreds of innocent subpostmasters prosecuted, and claims of a toxic culture including an investigation against Mr Read himself.
Last month, it emerged that Jane Davies, the Post Office’s former human resources director, complained about Mr Read’s behaviour under a separate whistle-blowing process, which triggered an external investigation due to report back shortly.
Henry Staunton, who was fired by Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, as the Post Office’s chairman in January, claimed earlier this month that Mr Read had overseen a culture of misogyny. Mr Read has said he absolutely refutes the allegations made against him.
The Post Office’s grievances policy says staff may complain around issues of health and safety or behaviour in cases where raising the issue informally with a manager has been unsuccessful, or if they are complaining about their direct manager.
The nature of the grievances revealed by the Freedom of Information request is not clear, and it is understood that they have all now been resolved.
A Post Office spokesman said: “As part of our work to change the culture of Post Office, we encourage any person with a complaint to come forward.
“All complaints are investigated thoroughly, fairly and appropriately, in order to ensure that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated.”
The Post Office website lists five individuals who comprise the group executive, although this has been cut down from nine at the start of the year, and the company’s senior ranks have been shuffled since September 2019, when Mr Read was made chief executive.
Ms Badenoch addressed Post Office staff last Wednesday, saying its board had provided “strong leadership” over recent months and provided a “unit of purpose”.
She said that postmasters had been “badly let down in the past”.
Mr Read emailed staff last week to inform them about Mr Woodley’s resignation. He said Mr Woodley had told him late last year that he had decided to resign and that he wanted to “do something different in life”.
Mr Read wrote: “His support for me and the business through this time has been unwavering and he has delivered a great deal for us.”
The Post Office spokesman said: “Owen Woodley leaves us at the end of August. He has made a considerable contribution to the organisation and we are all very grateful for this.
“He has been planning to step back from his role to pursue personal projects for some time, and our plans to ensure a smooth handover are well under way.”
Ms Badenoch has been in a public row with Mr Staunton since he claimed in February that the Government sought to delay compensation payouts to subpostmasters, who were wrongfully prosecuted for shortfalls caused by errors in the Post Office Horizon software developed by Fujitsu.
She has said his claims are “full of lies”.
‘Pay the money back straight away,” the Post Office investigator tells the dumbfounded subpostmaster. “If you don’t, you will be prosecuted and you could go to prison for two years.”
It is Oct 11 2017 and Chirag Sidhpura is accused of stealing £57,543 from his post office branch in Farncombe, Surrey. Sidhpura, 40, knows the shortfall is a phantom generated by the malfunctioning Horizon IT system but he is too scared to argue and the next day his father-in-law pays off the alleged shortfall.
“My heart was coming out of my body,” he recalls. “I was too frightened to challenge the demand.”
After co-operating with the Post Office investigation, Sidhpura was not prosecuted but he was suspended and lost his job. He was later interviewed under police caution, though no action was taken. His marriage almost broke down, his relationship with his three children was damaged and, today, he suffers from depression and anxiety.
Like hundreds of others, Sidhpura has endured years of poverty and stress. However, the disclosure of one document could have prevented this. It is a secret report by an eminent lawyer completed a year before Sidhpura was confronted. It raised concerns about the Post Office’s treatment of its subpostmasters and the Horizon software.
The review by Sir Jonathan Swift KC is now at the centre of cover-up allegations as new documents show how it was kept confidential for six years and five months. Lawyers for subpostmasters who were prosecuted believe it could have made a material difference to their cases.
The report, completed in 2016, was critical of the Post Office pressuring subpostmasters into pleading guilty to false accounting. “The allegation the Post Office effectively bullied subpostmasters into pleading guilty to offences by unjustifiably overloading the charge sheet is a stain on the character of the business,” concluded Sir Jonathan, now a High Court Judge. He also identified vulnerabilities in Horizon and suggested Fujitsu, the system’s operator, could manipulate data remotely, contrary to previous denials by the Post Office.
Tim Parker, then Post Office chairman, did not disclose the report to his board, Whitehall or to the subpostmasters before or during their High Court litigation. Its existence only emerged in 2022, after a Freedom of Information request by Eleanor Shaikh, a friend of Sidhpura.
“The report would have been incendiary had it been disclosed to the lawyers representing the subpostmasters,” Shaikh told Telegraph. “It would have yielded the necessary ammunition for them to attack the false premise that subpostmasters were solely in control... they would have been spared millions in legal costs, their convictions may have been overturned, compensation settled, reputations restored.”
The suppression of the Swift review lies at the heart of the plight of the subpostmasters, according to new documents marked “sensitive” and seen by The Telegraph.
They reveal that in January 2016, Parker told ministers the Swift report “found no systematic problem” with Horizon. Also, in June 2016, he cancelled extra work into whether branch accounts might have been remotely altered. Meanwhile, unpublished emails in 2020 reveal unease in Whitehall about Parker’s failure to disclose the report.
Parker, now chairman of Samsonite, told the Government he kept the Swift report secret from the board because the Post Office’s leading counsel advised him to do so. When asked to comment by The Telegraph, Mr Parker declined.
The Business Department, stonewalled and delayed disclosure until on Aug 11 2022, Eleanor Shaikh told them she would ask the public inquiry for these documents. Five hours later she received the Swift report and documents, which were heavily censored and redacted.
She claimed this was yet another cover-up. “Parker and the Post Office chose not to disclose the Swift review ... because it was damaging to the reputation and commercial interests of their brand and because its lawyers thought they could get away with it.”
A Post Office spokesman said: “The Horizon inquiry is a statutory inquiry to establish what happened and to question witnesses under oath. It is for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions.”
‘The allegation that the PO effectively bullied people into pleading guilty is a stain on the business’