A compensation scheme for postmasters who helped expose the Post Office scandal has been unveiled by the enterprise secretary.
Postmasters who have been impacted by the Post Office scandal beginning from the late Nineteen Nineties will probably be compensated beneath a fought-for scheme to be delivered by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and overseen by an impartial advisory board.
Up to 555 postmasters who took authorized motion towards the Post Office over the Horizon IT scandal, the place workers have been wrongly imprisoned for theft they didn’t perform resulting from Horizon IT accounting software program errors, are to be compensated.
Announcing the scheme, Business Secretary Grant Shapps mentioned: “I am acutely aware of the pain and suffering that these postmasters and their families have been through as part of the Horizon IT scandal. As business secretary, I will always stand by them.”
Postmasters have had entry to a £19.5m interim compensation bundle, launched in June 2022.
The Horizon accounting software program incorrectly recorded shortfalls in branches’ accounts, which the Post Office demanded was coated by sub-postmasters. Many have been wrongfully prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 for false accounting or theft.
The postmasters had been ineligible for the earlier Historical Shortfall Scheme set as much as compensate others who have been affected by the failure.
While postmasters acquired £43m plus authorized prices in a settlement towards the Post Office over the scandal, a lot of the cash was taken up by the prices of funding their case.
This new compensation scheme, created following session with postmasters, will allow them to obtain related compensation to their friends, a few of whom have been awarded greater than £100,000.
Read extra:
Post Office Scandal: How the consequences of one in every of Britain’s largest miscarriages of justice are nonetheless felt at the moment
Also administering the scheme will probably be impartial claims facilitators utilizing different dispute decision so instances could be settled between events with out the necessity to go to court docket.
Claimants are being requested to begin making ready their claims forward of submitting their functions subsequent yr, and are mentioned to obtain £900 every in authorized charges to organize their declare.
The scheme’s impartial advisory board is to comprise parliamentarians and teachers, together with Kevan Jones MP and Lord Arbuthnot who has campaigned for wronged postmasters.
Further particulars of the compensation scheme course of are to be introduced shortly, the Department for Business mentioned.
Source: information.sky.com”