In 2006, Chris Head became Britain’s youngest Subpostmaster at the age of 18. He was given the keys to the West Bolden branch near Sunderland. According to an interview he gave to The Sun newspaper, Chris had small discrepancies from the start of his tenure. In 2014, Chris says the Post Office’s Horizon IT system at his branch “went out of control“. One week Chris had a £40,000 shortfall. Within a few weeks it had more than doubled to £88,000. Chris was suspended in 2015 and the Post Office pursued him through the civil courts for the cash they say he owed them. Chris joined up with Alan Bates’ Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance and was one of the 555 claimants in Bates v Post Office.

Since the Bates v Post Office judgments, Chris has campaigned for justice for Subpostmasters, taking a petition with his MP to Downing Street and working with Subpostmasters, ministers, officials, MPs and the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board to try to ensure the various compensation/redress schemes are fair. For a basic introduction to the various compensation/redress schemes available, it might be worth starting on the Post Office corporate website.

This is Chris’s latest letter to the new Post Office minister Gareth Thomas. Some of it is quite technical, but that is partly the point. These compensation schemes are technical, bureaucratic, legalistic, and from Chris’s perspective, unfit for purpose. I have published Chris’s letter with kind permission and made minimal edits for clarity. All the links in the letter and anything in square brackets has been added by me.

Letter to the Minister

11 November 2024

Dear Minister Thomas,

Following on from the Business and Trade Select Committee hearing on the 5th November and the subsequent evidence at Sir Wyn Williams’ Public Inquiry by former Postal Minister Kevin Hollinrake it is clear that there are changes that need to be made. I accept some progress has been made, albeit far too slow.

Horizon Shortfall Scheme

Around the HSS scheme no matter what is suggested otherwise, ordinary people are not in a position to properly quantify their losses. They have no idea around the multitude of heads of loss that can be claimed within the compensation schemes, which is why on the whole we see those that have legal representation (again albeit after an offer has been made) tend to receive larger offers, because their claims are much more accurate and cover all the applicable heads of loss based upon the advice they receive.

There are many claimants who for had already settled their claims for a various number of reasons, mainly because they were in duress and state of desperation who hadn’t claimed for loss of earnings as a major example and were simply offered the basic 26 months that would be provided for closure of office under one of the closure programs. Loss of income and shortfalls plus interest alone in a number of cases would far exceed the FSA [Fixed Sum Award] of £75,000.

But if these people are unaware of the ability to properly claim loss of earnings on top of shortfalls and other heads of loss they will likely assume £75,000 is the right course of action, but only because they have not had the relevant necessary advice. If this is not addressed as I pointed out to [Post Office CEO] Nick Read in 2021 we will all end up revisiting this later down the line for a 3rd time (another appeals process) because people would have been materially disadvantaged and have not been provided the full and fair compensation they have been promised over and over again because they were denied access to advice they need to make a fully informed choice.

Group Litigation Order (GLO) Scheme / Overturned Conviction (OC) Scheme

Having been one of only two people (the other being Sir Alan) of progressing through the entire process in the GLO scheme [for non-convicted Bates v Post Office claimants] including the dispute resolution procedures in place it is now clear the scheme is not acting as designed at the outset. The Independent Panel assessment is based too much on legalistic process in a commercial litigation environment as opposed to the spirit of the ex gratia compensation scheme that is based around fairness and delivery of full compensation that as per section 1.1.2 of the guidance is to put claimants back in the position they likely would have been in, using the balance of probability as the evidential bar for doing so. This must also involve putting people back in the right position in ‘real terms’, not back to where they were 10 years ago. It is supposed to also take into account future losses or long term damage to income due to the Horizon Scandal which has prevented people earning in ‘real terms’ amounts they would likely have been had they continued in their Post Office or invested in other business ventures. What I find frustrating is on the claimants side as with my own case we have provided all the necessary supporting evidence of what earnings can be obtained by someone without any qualifications as they entered the Post Office business straight from school and therefore based it around balance of probability that earning £43,000 + in ordinary employment adjusted for the area of the North East of England (bearing in mind the median UK wide average salary is just over £28,000) and yet any response from DBT [the Department for Business and Trade, which technically “owns” the Post Office] and their legal representatives make continuous assertions without providing any supporting evidence whatsoever on their part or on the balance of probability as the scheme is supposedly designed.

Secondly, a problem I pointed out previously and discussed with members of the HCAB (Horizon Compensation Advisory Board) a few weeks ago. Once you have been in a protracted negotiation process lasting over 8 months and been in the GLO process for well over 17 months from claim submission and you run out of road and head to the Independent Panel 1st assessment which is non-binding. Because of the above mentioned very legalistic approach they take (rather than a holistic view with the overarching aim of putting claimants back where they likely would have been) they determine an outcome that is less than the DBT offer (which in itself you have been advised by professional legal advisors and the accountancy experts is and I quote ‘not grounded in a realistic scenario’) you are placed in an impossible dilemma.

You either accept the DBT offer which they have agreed to reinstate to pre panel level (including any increased adjustments the panel recommended) or you return back to the panel for the 2nd assessment which is classed as legally binding and therefore in my case is putting at risk a substantial amount of money from the offer. This is something inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams has said should not happen, once an offer is there it should always be available even if you proceed down the other available dispute resolution paths. The problem being that to get to the final stop of the reviewer Sir Ross Cranston you can only do so by going to the panel for the 2nd assessment. This is a complete failure of process because to get there you have to risk the offer you have on the table being taken away from you in order to fully utilise all other dispute resolution processes of the scheme.

James Hartley, who is head of dispute resolution at Freeths, mentioned at the Select Committee that if more claims end up at the Independent Panel stage it will NOT result in a good or fair outcome for the Postmasters because of the approach of the panel, and effectively this goes completely against the spirit of the scheme which is to deliver full and fair compensation back to the position we would have been in as specifically indicated from the government Ministers.

In the overturned convictions scheme they have appointed Lord Dyson to assess Non Pecuniary awards via ENE (Early Neutral Evaluation) and Sir Gary Hickinbottom to Chair the Pecuniary Assessment panel. He can get involved in case management. I also understand from the evidence of Sir Gary at the Select Committee that he intends to hold a hearing in early January around the specific issue of ‘future losses’ and issue recommendations accordingly to the Post Office/Government. He also mentioned he wants to invite submissions from the other schemes representatives – ie HSS and GLO – if they also have issues around future losses, so he can include the findings in his recommendations.

What I hope to see is the Select Committee make a number of recommendations, but specific to the GLO scheme is that Sir Ross Cranston is given far more powers than he currently has, which is he operates far too late in the process. That comes with a huge monetary risk to the claimant having to go to a second, binding, panel hearing, first, in order to reach him. He can only intervene on principle application rather than calculation of offers (a position a claimant should never be put in as this will cause them far more mental harm – a criticism made by Dr Neil Hudgell [from Hudgell solicitors] that this redress process alone is making people ill). This means there is effectively a differing of process between the OC and GLO scheme which disadvantages GLO claimants and is clearly evident and therefore the schemes are not treating people fairly and equally across the board.

The same applies in the HSS, as they effectively still have available to them the recourse as do OC claimants to civil litigation on their claim if they are unable to resolve their dispute. Claimants to GLO scheme do not have recourse to litigation. Sir Ross Cranston could be given a wider remit, maybe alongside Dentons (the claims mediators) so their powers are also extended in order to help mediate between parties and giving their assessment of the merits of the claim.

I intend to wait for the recommendations of the Select Committee, the government’s full response and the hearing and subsequent recommendations made by Sir Gary in respect of future losses, because I cannot progress any further with the high level of risk involved in monetary terms of the claim of what seems like a flawed process. This needs urgent attention before many more claimants potentially reach this point. If we don’t address these issues it will lead to further delay, outrage and injustice inflicted upon those who have already suffered so much. The biggest point or note is we cannot have such a difference of operation of the schemes to deliver justice to the same group of people.

In the interests of the fairness test mentioned by Sir Alan, upon feedback from DBT and their legal advisors Addleshaw Goddard and because I now had a far better understanding of the quantification of the claims, I have revised my own position substantially to take these things into account. The major hurdle is where you would continue to be in the future, in real terms from the accepted position of where I would be in 2024 of but for earnings, compared to what is realistically achievable going forward again in real terms and what that means for a net loss between now and expected retirement including taking into account what would be the present value of future monies.

I have also included calculations in comparison to tapering effects of income both keeping but for earnings static and expected income increasing year on year and also increasing both in real terms going forward. Then I also provided numerous Ogden Table calculations using different earnings in mitigation of what I have either actually earned or what those actual earnings would be in real terms today therefore reducing my claim downwards accordingly. All the necessary Ogden discounts have also been applied to the numbers from Table A. Yet we still have outright rejection from DBT but without them providing any supporting evidence of the reasons or why they feel on the balance of probability it is wrong.

I am collecting more and more evidence from GLO claimants both from the claim application itself and expert reports and then the offer letters from DBT that come from multiple legal representatives that suggests equality is not being met on heads of loss for very similar situations and scenarios.

I am therefore fearful of other claimants reaching this stage and the adverse affects it will have on them especially on the more elderly claimants, the extremely vulnerable claimants or those already in severe ill health. People will be reluctant to go to the panel stage in fear of their offers going down, and even if DBT agree to reinstate the pre panel offer, as they did in my case, if they are advised that the reinstated offer is unfair by their representatives they still have the risk of it going back down at the 2nd binding assessment, in order so they can reach Sir Ross Cranston as the final reviewer, especially considering how much of their claim might be at risk in the process without anyway of recovering it. It is overly bureaucratic and does not deliver the full and fair outcome promised to those in the scheme.

We must allow Dentons and Sir Ross to intervene at a far earlier stage during the negotiations stage after an offer is made if no agreement can be reached, if we are to resolve these claims fairly and quickly especially in comparison with how the OC scheme is delivered (for example), otherwise the injustice will run and run. I am trying to bring this to the attention of those able to recommend or push for these changes before the remaining 200 claimants (which are the overly complex claims) reach anywhere near this particular point and prevent any further trauma on this group of people.

Kind Regards,

Chris Head

---

The journalism on this blog is crowdfunded. If you would like to join the “secret email” newsletter, please consider making a one-off donation. The money is used to keep the contents of this website free. You will receive irregular, but informative email updates about the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.