I was UK’s youngest postmaster at 18 but lost everything after Post Office scandal…I had to leave the country
WHEN Christopher Head became the youngest sub-postmaster in Britain at the tender age of 18 he thought he had a job for life.
His appointment made him a poster boy to attract younger people to the job and he was regularly praised for helping locals in his home village of West Boldon, near Sunderland.
But nine years later, Christopher found himself suspended and at the centre of a criminal investigation after the faulty Horizon computer system showed his Post Office had a shortfall of £88,000.
A threat of being prosecuted was dropped six months later but the PO spent five years pursuing him through the civil courts to get the cash back and Christopher lost everything, including his adjoining shop.
He is one of hundreds of postmasters who had criminal cases against them shelved but suffered financial hardship after being suspended or sacked.
Christopher, now 36, was forced to go abroad for work and is now employed in an Amazon warehouse.
He and other postmasters who were not convicted of any crime don’t qualify for a Government scheme which automatically offers victims £600,000 each.
Instead, Whitehall appointed forensic accountants to assess how much they had lost in earnings after being sacked. Chris says he has been offered less than 15 per cent of the six figure sum suggested.
Christopher, who still lives in West Boldon, said: “We’re having to fight for every single penny to get a decent payout.
“In some ways it would have been more simple had I been convicted but not jailed. At least I would have had a clear compensation package.”
Problems from the start
Christopher bought the post office after starting work there aged 12 with a paper round before helping on the till.
He says there were issues with Horizon from the moment he took over in 2006.
He said: “The system was already in when I arrived and there were discrepancies from the start. We’d be anything from £50 to £200 short from time to time.
“At the start I’d call the Horizon helpline but you could spend two, three or even four hours on the phone which made it difficult to serve customers in between.
“In the end I’d just make up the shortfall myself.”
In 2014, Christopher says the system “went out of control” refusing to fire up each morning with “twelve reboots just to start the darn thing.”
He started receiving messages from Horizon saying data had been corrupted and engineers were sent out to replace routers while BT replaced phone lines to improve the connection. Eventually he was given a new piece of kit.
But instead of fixing the problem, in late 2014 Horizon registered the post office was short of more than £40,000 and within a matter of weeks it had more than doubled to £88,000.
Christopher was suspended in February 2015 and asked to go to a meeting at his solicitor’s office in Newcastle where he was met by Post Office private investigators, who have similar powers to police.
He said: “I was to attend a voluntary interview and was told a solicitor could be present.
“When I got in there they started cautioning me and that’s when it hit home that it wasn’t a chat but was really serious.
“I was given a second interview in July when they asked me more questions like how many times I had called the help line. I asked them if they realised they had replaced my machine and they said yes.
“When I started asking them questions about the corrupt data messages they simply closed their notebook and said ‘we’re ending this meeting now.’”
Six months later, the Post Office told Christopher they would not press charges but would pursue the missing funds through civil action.
He said: “It was all so stressful having it hanging over my head during those six months. The Post Office was shut and the retail side decimated because it lost the footfall from those who used the PO counter.
“I kept paying my three staff because if I laid them off I would have to pay them redundancy and I was worried they would get jobs elsewhere and I wouldn’t retain them if I was reinstated.
“It was really awkward with everyone in the village because the Post Office was one of the nation’s most trusted brands and people naturally think ‘well there’s no smoke without fire’.
“There was some negative local press and while some customers I knew for years supported me, it’s inevitable to have doubts when an accusation is made against someone you know. It was awful.”
Christopher tried to get a job locally but struggled because he was viewed as ‘overqualified’ for retail jobs.
After a nine month search for work, he moved to Athens for two years, where he lived as a boy, to take up a post as an English-speaking complaints officer for Apple tech.
He returned to Britain in 2019 to work in Amazon’s warehouse in Sunderland and to fight his case in the High Court.
Huge campaign
Christopher was among 555 postmasters led by Alan Bates – the hero of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs. the Post Office – who won a group action to prove Horizon was faulty.
The Post Office agreed to settle out of court for £58 million but the claimants’ legal costs left them with only around £20,000 each.
The government agreed to supplement the payment with compensation but Christopher says they are not offering enough – despite sending in their own forensic accountants to reach settlement figures.
Christopher, who launched an early petition against the treatment of postmasters said: “When you add everything up in terms of loss of net income, the damage to reputation, the loss of a business and a future career, it’s a lot.
“The actual amount has to stay confidential but in December last year an offer came through and it was less than 15 percent of what was asked for.
“It’s just not good enough after all we’ve been through. I lost a good future, I’ve not even had time to date anyone because I’ve been so consumed by all this.
“Mine is one of the first complex cases of its kind to go through the system so my fear is that we’re all going to be offered lower sums.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week announced he would push through legislation to exonerate all the postmasters who were wrongly convicted in the scandal.
It followed a public outcry after the ITV show Mr Bates vs the Post Office brought the fiasco to wider public attention after years of campaigning.
More than nine million Brits tuned in to watch the programme and director James Strong said he was “astonished” by the reaction.
He also revealed that the cast, who include actors Toby Jones and Will Mellor, felt so passionately about the injustice that they took a pay cut to get the show out.
Compensation offers
A Department for Business and Trade spokesman said: “We recognise that for postmasters who have had to endure hardships or even jail time no amount of compensation will ever be enough, but this compensation aims to provide some sort of relief to those impacted.
“We have made funding available to ensure all victims of the Horizon Scandal can deservedly receive compensation and have established the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry to identify what happened and ensure lessons are learnt.
“While we do not comment on individual cases, around £138 million of compensation has been paid across three schemes and all those who have their Horizon convictions overturned are offered £600,000 in compensation.”