Paula Vennells’s church compares Post Office TV drama to The Crown
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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 on Monday.
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 ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office that has reignited the scandal.
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 spokesman added: “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 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.
In an official statement released on Monday, the bishop said: “The recent ITV dramatisation understandably rekindles the suffering and pain of the sub-postmasters and their families who are victims of the Horizon IT scandal, and anger in all of us for such a serious miscarriage of justice.
“I hope and pray that the public inquiry will explain fully the sequence of events, provide redress for the victims and hold to account the responsible people and organisations.”
In a statement three years ago, Bishop Smith, himself the son of a subpostmaster, said: “I have maintained a close watch on developments and I note that Post Office Limited reached a settlement agreement with some of the plaintiffs. It is my understanding that the action taken was against Post Office Limited as a corporation and that no culpability was attributed to any specific individuals.
“Ms Vennells has made a personal apology. I am also aware that there are many legal processes still underway which I, and anyone else, would hesitate to pre-empt.”
He said then there was “a difference between allegations made against Post Office Limited and allegations of personal wrongdoing by Ms Vennells” and said after taking legal advice that it would be wrong to “simply impute to Ms Vennells all of the failures found to have been committed by Post Office Limited”.
‘It’s terrible to have that stigma over you’
A victim of the Post Office scandal who was once Britain’s youngest sub-postmaster claims he has been offered just 10 per cent of the compensation he requested from the Government scheme, writes Blathnaid Corless.
Christopher Head went from delivering newspapers at his local Post Office in West Bolden, near Newcastle, at age 12, to working behind the counter serving customers at 13, to eventually buying the branch in 2006 when he turned 18.
Little did the teenager know that his new business venture would eventually lead to his world being turned upside down.
Mr Head’s tenure ended in 2015, when he became one of more than 700 sub-postmasters accused of fraud and theft by the Post Office owing to losses caused by its faulty Horizon IT system.
He was suspended and placed under criminal investigation for almost six months before the Post Office dropped his case without giving a reason.
The Post Office proceeded to try to recover the shortfalls, which totalled more than £88,000, through civil proceedings, but his case was eventually dropped after the High Court found that “bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system caused discrepancies in postmasters’ branch accounts”.
Despite escaping a conviction, Mr Head said the case left him and his family’s reputation in the local community in ruins.
“It was covered in the local press and it hugely damaged my reputation. It’s terrible to go from being the centre of your community in the Post Office to have that sort of stigma over you to have done something that wrong.
“A very small number of people were supportive but there’s always going to be something in the back of people’s minds because the Post Office was such a trusted institution. That obviously made it very difficult for me in the community.”
He said he began to withdraw and not leave the house, “even though I knew I had done nothing wrong”. He also said he felt “guilty” for how it impacted his parents, who he said were also well-known in the local community.
Mr Head applied to the Government’s GLO compensation scheme, announced in March 2022, which is open to postmasters who were not prosecuted and are therefore not eligible to seek compensation from the Post Office.
The scheme aims to “deliver compensation to eligible postmasters that is full and fair, restoring postmasters back into the position they would have been in had it not been for the Horizon-related actions of the Post Office.”
He says he received an offer on Dec 28 which was “barely 10 per cent” of the sum he had claimed, which he cannot disclose for confidentiality reasons. He is now planning to appeal on advice from lawyers.
“It is very clear that the scheme is flawed and not fit for purpose,” he said. “If they think anyone is going to settle on those terms it’s crazy.”
He added that the Government offering 10 per cent of a victim’s claim is “clearly not going to return you to the position you were in”.
‘Somebody needs to be held accountable for everybody’
Meanwhile, a former sub postmistress who was jailed aged 19 has said somebody needs to be held accountable over the Post Office scandal.
Tracy Felstead, from Telford, was wrongly accused of stealing over £11,000 while working at Camberwell Green Post Office in London and spent six months in a young offenders institution in 2002.
She had her theft conviction quashed at the Court of Appeal in 2011, and on Monday told the BBC accountability was needed over the scandal, which has seen more than 700 postmasters falsely convicted.
“We were classed as criminals by the Post Office, now it’s their turn to actually be investigated,” she said. “Somebody needs to be held accountable for everybody.”
Ms Felstead also said she believed Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office who was in charge while the prosecutions were ongoing, should be stripped of her CBE.
“In my eyes, she shouldn’t have had it in the first place,” Ms Felstead said.
Another victim of the scandal broke down in tears after appearing on Good Morning Britain on Monday.
Jess Kaur was comforted by Susanna Reid as she talked about her ordeal.
The Department for Business and Trade, which runs the compensation scheme, said it could not comment on individual cases.
