Thread by @nickwallis

THREAD: On 29 Jan I got an email from someone I’d never met or spoken to before. We have been corresponding since and today we had our first chat. Anna (not her real name) is a former Subpostmaster. She is still fighting for compensation and has what she perceives as clear...

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... evidence of remote access to her branch accounts AND the Post Office is stalling her compensation claim.

But let’s start at the beginning:

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Anna was a Subpostmaster in Aylesbury in the mid-2000s. She sold her two properties to buy a Post Office and retail business and the adjoining residential property.

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Her partner gave up a “great job” to join her in the venture. He was her childhood sweetheart. They had met again later in life. They were both 47. The purchase price of the business and property was £325,00. Anna paid it from the sale of her houses.

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“We took over full of hope, full of plans and in love”, Anna told me. The plan was to give it a go for thirteen years and retire Down Under. “He had an Australian government pension waiting for him at 60 and of course I…

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… would be selling the Post Office and Stores thirteen years on.”

Unfortunately “right from the word go” Anna and her partner couldn’t get the Horizon system to balance. “Even when the Post Office trainer was there.”

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Every week they were at least £320 down. A familiar story played out in a matter of weeks: “Staff got sacked, rows started over the missing money, accusations, distrust of everyone, fear, breakdown of relationship, the village hearing of missing money, gossip…

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… and threats.”

One June evening, a Wednesday, when Anna was trying to get the system to balance so she could roll over into the following week’s trading period she found she was, once more, £320 down.

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“I rang the Horizon Helpline hysterically telling them I was not opening the Post Office any more. I could not take any more missing monies.”

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The Helpline allegedly told her to keep the Post Office open and “the money would be back tomorrow". Anna was suspicious. “When I said how was that going to happen, she [the Helpline operator] assured me it just would be back".

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According to Anna: “Overnight that money came back into my Post Office and I realised they had access to the back end of my system. That is, the Post Office and Fujitsu had access and they knew it and they put back that £320 whilst I slept.”

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Anna realised she was not in control of her accounts. She immediately put the Post Office up for sale. “I realised what they were doing. Who could I tell? I realised I was in a lottery of just how much money was going to be taken from me. I knew that…

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…figure could one day be £32,000. I needed to get out.”

Anna succeeded in selling her branch, but “the stress and fear of getting rid of the Post Office pushed me in to terrible depression. I was never the same again.”

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Anna did not work with money again. “I had depression for 2 years. I… made sandwiches for the following 12 years.”

Anna told me: “I never got a good job again. I could never get a mortgage. I never knew what happened to my partner, I never saw him again…

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…I think he went back to Australia blaming me.”

Anna is now 67 years old, working “hand to mouth”, cleaning offices in the evenings. It’s not the life she expected. “It’s hard work, Nick. Hard. It’s tiring…

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…I am physically burning out. I need to stop working, but I cant.”

In her original email, Anna wrote: “The Post Office was the rock me and my generation smashed themselves against. In 2004 the Post Office and Fujitsu were in cahoots covering up together…

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… I have always maintained that the money that was being taken by ‘the Horizon System’ might well have ended up in Fujitsu employees’ bank accounts. Why is that not being considered?”

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To get away from Aylesbury, Anna moved to the North West of England in 2006.

“I blamed myself for the disaster.” She had talked her partner into giving his job to embark on a new adventure and “It fell apart straight away…

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… I always had so much guilt over it I would not talk to anyone, go out with anyone, I have never trusted anyone, I was reclusive.”

Anna did not tell anyone what happened to her, not even her family, until 2020…

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… “I have only started to socialise again this last year,” she told me

In 2022 Anna joined the Horizon Shortfall Scheme (HSS). The offer she was originally given was derisory, but…

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… she would have accepted it were it not for their “mean-mouthed apology and then stating they did not accept I could possibly have been depressed for two years after my ordeal. Once again I was being called a liar.”

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Anna now has legal representation. Over the last 18 months she has been putting together a new application for compensation, involving forensic accountants and psychiatric reports.

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She describes the experience of dredging up her nightmares for the benefit of the psychiatrist as “harrowing. Harrowing to do, and harrowing to read. You have no idea.”

On submitting her new 450 page claim to the HSS, the Post Office came back…

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… telling her solicitors that they would only accept it if it was printed out in hard copy. “They couldn’t believe it”, Anna told me. She thinks it is a stalling tactic. Anna’s solicitors told HSS it was fine as an electronic document, and far less likely to get lost.

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“Who is going to pay for the printing of 450 pages?” Anna asks, “And the time? Why aren’t they printing it themselves?” Whilst the solicitors argue, Anna says “my claim just sits there….

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… It is all game playing to not pay people like me out. This Post Office Scandal is wearing us all down again.”

Anna said: “I call myself an ‘escapee’ of the Post Office, but I still lost everything…

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… Including two properties, my livelihood, my self-respect, my confidence, my friends and my partner from Australia, who I never saw again.”

But, says Anna, she’s still fighting.

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She wants other Subpostmasters to know they’re not alone and that she is standing with them. And she is determined to get proper redress for what happened to her.

ENDS