Post Office scandal: Sub-postmaster still waiting for apology over 'traumatic' £5K Horizon error

A sub-postmaster from Sheffield has told how he waited 16 years for compensation and is yet to receive an apology for his appalling treatment.

Richard Jenkin, who ran Woodhouse Mill Post Office for more than 30 years before retiring in 2015, was one of hundreds of sub-postmasters caught up in the Horizon IT scandal.

He was wrongly told there was a £5,000 shortfall in his accounts and was given just three days in which to pay or face action, which could have seen him prosecuted and even jailed, as happened to other innocent victims.

He finally received compensation last year, 16 years after the 'traumatic' episode back in 2007, yet he says he has never had an apology from Post Office bosses.

16-year wait for compensation, but no apology

Despite what he went through, Richard considers himself one of the 'fortunate' ones as he suffered only one large alleged shortfall and was able to pay, albeit on credit, unlike others who faced ruinous demands.

He wants to know why we hear so much about sub-postmasters being wrongly accused over shortfalls due to the faulty IT system, yet nothing about alleged losses hitting crown post offices, which are directly managed.

"When the £5,000 shortfall showed up on our system, we spent every spare minute over the course of a month trying to find where that money had gone," he told The Star.

"We knew it had to be down to an error with Horizon but eventually I got a phone call at lunchtime on a Monday telling us we had until Wednesday to pay.

"Thankfully I was able to make the transaction on my credit card. I was fortunate that I had sufficient balance. It was so traumatic and so frustrating."

Richard submitted his details to Second Sight Investigations, which led the initial probe into the scandal, and was told he had a case against the Post Office.

But he had to wait until 2023 to finally receive compensation for his loss, via the Horizon Shortfall Scheme, and to this day says he has never seen anyone from Post Office Limited or received any kind of apology for what he went through.

He eventually took the opportunity to retire in 2015, with the post office moving to the nearby petrol station.

He says he misses the customers but not the 60-hour weeks, during which he often worked until midnight, or the way he was treated by Post Office bosses.

What happened to the missing money?

Richard still has two big questions about the scandal.

He wants to know what happened to the missing money and why no crown post offices, which are directly managed by Post Office Limited, seem to have been affected.

"I've not heard of anybody coming forward to say they got £20,000 extra on their account," he said. "If there are errors one way, you would expect errors the other way as well.

"If money goes missing from a branch where does it go? POL presumably. Or is the computer system able to change figures without a corresponding transaction?"

He added: "As far as I'm aware the directly-managed crown offices use the same computer system.

"Did they have similar problems? If so what treatment did the staff receive.? Were any of their staff sacked, prosecuted, imprisoned or made to pay back the sum involved?"

What has the Post Office said?

A Post Office spokesperson confirmed that all post office branches, including crown branches which are directly managed, use the Horizon IT system.

They said: "There have been several versions of Horizon since its introduction in 1999 and the current version of the system, introduced from 2017, was found in the group litigation to be robust, relative to comparable systems.

"But we are not at all complacent and we continue to work with our postmasters to identify and invest in improvements."

They did not respond to The Star's question about whether any crown post office employees had been falsely accused and faced prosecution.

The spokesperson added: "We fully share the aims of the current public inquiry, set up to get to the truth of what happened in the past.

"The inquiry is examining the complex issues involved, which span a period of two decades and it's for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions in due course."