A LEADING South West Post Office subpostmaster has urged the public and businesses not to boycott the local post offices in protest after the Horizon computer scandal.
Howard Greenman is the National Federation of Subpostmasters South West Non-Executive Director.
He is a victim of the Horizon computer which subpostmasters used for their accounting needs. He is fighting for compensation for himself and many others after they were accused of theft after Horizon wrongly attributed financial losses to them.
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The National Federation of Subpostmasters is urging people to continue to support local post offices in Devon after a social media backlash over the ITV drama ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’.
Howard said: "The federation is fighting on behalf of all subpostmasters on all aspects of their working lives and this includes the Horizon issues which I was a victim of. I'd encourage anyone who is doing their car tax online, for instance, to go to their local post office branch to do it over the counter. Things are hard enough with the cost of living without our members losing business. A boycott will be counter-productive and not hit Post Office Limited as a business."
Hundreds of people have vowed to boycott post offices over the four-part series depicting the Horizon scandal, which is the biggest miscarriage of justice ever seen in the United Kingdom.
More than 700 postmasters across the United Kingdom were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting, with some convicted and imprisoned. Post Office Ltd refused to entertain the idea that the fault was with Horizon.
Howard faced the same problem with Horizon creating shortfalls in his figures from his subpost office. Because he had financial knowledge, he did not report the shortfalls, for which he was not responsible. He knew he had done nothing wrong but he was concerned about the fallout from reputational damage and he knew he would lose his job. Also as a county councillor, he knew that any criminal conviction would bar him from local government office.
"So, although I knew it had nothing to do with anything I'd done, I covered it up by borrowing money and remortagaging our house," he said. " I lost £100,000 over the computer problems and my marriage broke up over the money issues that followed."
The experienced subpostmaster, who has run ten subpostoffices, thought the computer issues only affected him; he was unaware until later that it was a systemic problem.
Howard even tackled Paula Vennells, the former Post Office chief executive, at an annual federation conference in Torquay, over the alleged shortfalls. However, she dismissed his argument by saying where there were losses, there would be gains financially.
He said: "She didn't seem to take our problems seriously. It's shocked me because that's no way to run business."
Whilst the general public have been outraged by what happened to the victims, there is concern that the outpouring of negative feeling towards Post Office Ltd for their role in this scandal across social media may be detrimental to postmasters’ livelihoods by association.
NFSP chief executive Calum Greenhow said: “I cannot be more delighted that the truth is finally being heard but saddened that it has taken 20 years of overcoming hurdles put in place by the leadership of this country and hundreds of millions of pounds of legal fees for that truth to finally come out.
“From experience, the general public are very empathetic towards us as postmasters, but they may not realise that by boycotting Post Office Ltd, they harm our businesses.
“It is important to ensure that the general public are very much aware that as small businesspeople we want to remain at the heart of communities, serve them and support them as we always do."
Post offices are the beating heart of local communities. Postmasters are investors in Post Office Ltd and 98 per cent of post offices are privately owned. Many have life savings in their business, and they need the public’s continued support as postmasters have already been the most affected by this scandal.
Post offices deliver vital services to the most vulnerable in communities, providing parcel and letter collection and despatch; access to cash, essential utilities plus banking and government services. Without the post office network, millions of people would be cut adrift from these vital services.