Good Evening Everyone,

As you probably realise from my recent updates, things are still a mess for hundreds if not thousands of affected Postmasters, Postmistresses and their families.  The redress schemes are overly bureaucratic, adversarial and bogged down in fierce litigation tactics which are employed by both the Post Office and Government legal representatives.  I think it is important they are named and shamed as, Herbert Smith Freehills representing the Post Office and Addleshaw Goddard representing the government.

They are allowing these law firms to advance arguments against Postmasters which have no merit and can only be described as cruel.  I mean after everything that has been exposed since the ITV Drama, Mr Bates Vs The Post Office and the public inquiry we thought really was the beginning of the end.  One argument advanced against a Postmistress by the Post Office was that because she developed cancer and her parents also developed cancer, it is likely she wouldn't have been able to continue to work in her Post Office, in the North East town of Seaburn.  What about if the Horizon system had worked as it should and not had any shortfalls, which in turn meant the Post Office would not have taken aggressive action against her as they did with thousands of others, then she may not have ever developed cancer.  What if she had put temporary managers in to run the Post Office until she recovered and therefore she would have still owned and been working in the branch thereafter, all these arguments made to minimise liability and reduce the payout of her financial redress.  Judge for yourself but we should not be seeing arguments like this when both the Post Office and their shareholder the government have tried to tell everyone how sorry they are for the suffering of all those affected and they will be doing everything possible to put things right and deliver full and fair redress.  

It can only be described as total b******s.  Excuse my french but it needs to be said.

This week I have sent a letter to inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams before he releases his final report and recommendations, urging him to hold a further compensation hearing, so that he has access to all the up to date facts and problems before he finalises that report.

The letter I sent can be found in full on social media platform X here and I have placed a transcript below https://x.com/chrish9070/status/1894777946994319580 :-

26th February 2025 
 

Dear Sir Wyn,

I am writing today to urge you as the Inquiry Chair to convene a further hearing on compensation.  It is impossible for me in this letter to outline all the problems and what is still going wrong with the myriad redress schemes.  Since the spotlight of the inquiry, specifically the compensation hearings and the media scrutiny somewhat abated the Post Office and their shareholder the government continue their punitive behaviour towards claimants, with no end in sight. 

Those affected so badly by this scandal as you already know too well from the human impact hearings now face further harm by the deliberate slowness and adversarial nature of the schemes, which amounts to nothing short of cruelty.

Last week I wrote back to the Postal Minister to which I provided you a copy, raising concerns about the operational fairness of the redress schemes.  On the 17th of July 2023 when your interim report on compensation was released it covered the issue of bands for likely award of non-pecuniary compensation.  As set out in that report where you say: -

- the figures for each band were derived from decisions made by the HSS Independent Panel on HSS cases where there was good reason to expect cases were generally less serious. The more serious cases were likely to still be going through dispute resolution. The GLO Compensation Scheme expects to find some cases where the facts of the case would demand awards significantly higher than the upper figure for the top band.

This issue is still alive today, many HSS cases that were in dispute when this report was produced are still in dispute today, and no real determination on what those awards should look like to deliver redress that is both full and fair.  This is what I took up with the Minister last week when I was told that the independent panel is guided by ‘fairness’.  I went on to question what is ‘fairness’.  When my case went to the panel in the GLO scheme, there were only two cases before them.  They assessment mentioned that they had to be guided by fairness to other claimants.  Unless DBT were feeding the panel data from other claims, bearing in mind they only had two cases before them, they must be using data from the HSS scheme.  As many people have been forced to walk away because of the long drawn out and adversarial nature of the scheme, coupled with the fact the most complex cases in the HSS scheme are still yet to be resolved satisfactorily, then I’m unsure how they can be guided by fairness.  The Business and Trade Committee released it’s report on the 1st of January 2025 in which they recommended that awards for these sums of compensation are paid at or above the bands in which claimants fall.  I can say with absolute confidence because of my own case and the awards made to other claimants in the schemes, nothing has changed.

I note when the hearings held at the inquiry last year when both the Minister Gareth Thomas MP and the Director at DBT Carl Cresswell gave evidence you raised some concerns about how the Fixed Sum Awards operated.  This is causing a real dilemma to claimants.  The words you used was that the award, ‘would be gone forever’ should they decide to go down the full assessment route.  Having been directly involved in a few claims where this has been an issue I thought it was imperative to raise this again with you.  There was one lady in the HSS, who would not engage with any process whatsoever on her own and I assisted from start to finish over the course of around 9 months.  Having completed the application form that, the Post Office say they have simplified, the claimant received a request for further information.  This was a hundred and ninety-two questions long: seventy-one questions with multiple sub questions.  This caused the claimant severe stress and anxiety, and had it not been for me assisting her she would have walked away from the process, unable to cope or understand what was being asked of her.  Once I guided her to answer these questions, she was presented after a few weeks with the new proposal of the Fixed Sum Award, it contained two options, A and B.  Option A – Accept the Fixed Sum Award of £75,000 in full and final settlement, or Option B – Continue with the full assessment of the claim (with the caveat if this option was chosen, she would lose the option of the Fixed Sum).  Now we must remember there is no upfront legal advice for these applicants, that is only made available once an offer is made.  First, how does an ordinary lay person without any legal knowledge or understanding know what the true value of their claim is worth to make this decision.  Secondly the risk being that should they advance a claim above the fixed sum amount, there is no guarantee of what that offer might look like.  Based on the evidence I saw for this claimant and my greater understanding of the process I believe her claim was worth well in excess of £75,000 and probably around 3 times that figure.  The claimant wrote to me to say that over the past 19 years she had suffered untold mental health problems, all related to the Post Office, and has been on medication ever since and that she could no longer tolerate this adversarial process and also the risk that should she pursue a claim above the Fixed Sum, that she could be offered less and then have to enter the long drawn out dispute processes that could continue for years, as we have seen above with a large number of HSS claims in dispute for over 3 years.  There is also no guarantee she would get close to the fixed sum award let alone the sum claimed.  All this must be done without any legal advice, unless the individual is willing to pay for their own representation, which is out of reach of most people.  She reluctantly accepted the £75,000.  This does not meet the objective of full and fair compensation as promised by the Post Office and the shareholder HM Government.  The only possible justification for this in my mind, is to actively discourage the higher value claims, hoping these claimants will surrender their fight through ill-health, exhaustion, financial desperation or old age.

The same issue occurs with the £600,000 Fixed Sum Awards and as we see that several claimants who had their convictions overturned in April 2021 at the Court of Appeal are yet to reach full and final settlements, we are rapidly approaching the 4-year anniversary.  People are afraid of the process and the risks involved of pursuing a full claim without the knowledge of how long that dispute might ensue for and whether they might end up with less than the Fixed Sum Award, because of the adversarial nature of the process.  Claimants should be able to receive these awards in any of the schemes and then be invited to raise a further claim for the remainder of their claim should there be sufficient evidence to do so and a likely chance of success of that claim, therefore without any risk.  I fear the narrative is going to be that because claimants have settled those claims, either walked away or accepted the fixed sum awards, that full and fair redress has been paid, when that can’t be further from the truth.  A lady approached me just two weeks ago, that her 80-year-old father was advised he had a claim more than £600,000 but he feared the offer coming in below that figure and having to fight for years to get the right amount of redress, if that day ever came.  That risk could be averted if the awards were paid now in full and then invited to make a further claim, without any risk of falling below those sums of money, and they could still choose to walk away later.  He also has reluctantly accepted the £600,000.

We are seeing people first refused a claim within the GLO scheme and then when the individual wishes to challenge that decision, they are denied legal representation. Had it not been for the pro-bono work of their legal representatives how would they have ever navigated this impossible hurdle.  

In your previous compensation interim report, it mentioned the aim of the GLO scheme was to provide compensation “which was similar to that which is available to their non-GLO peers,” i.e. in the HSS scheme.  Therefore, ensuring the schemes operate consistently is vitally important.  In the HSS scheme the offers are made by the Post Office, after recommendations from an Independent Panel.  Should the claimant be dissatisfied with the outcome, they can meet with a representative from the Post Office, known as the ‘Good Faith Meeting.’  If the dispute is not resolved by the Good Faith Meeting, they can escalate this to a member of the Post Office’s senior management, known as the ‘Escalation Meeting.’  If this meeting does not resolve the dispute it can go to mediation and potentially arbitration.  If we compare this to the GLO scheme operation where the first offer is made by DBT after receiving advice from their legal representatives Addleshaw Goddard, the dispute is a back-and-forth process between the claimant and DBT.  Bearing in mind my claim was submitted into the GLO scheme on the 20th of June 2023, the first offer arrived on the 28th of December 2023, the 2nd offer in April 2024 and the 3rd offer in July 2024, each stage taking approximately 3 months or more, even though we had challenged within 10-20 working days each time.  Because we could not agree to a settlement, the case was referred to the independent panel for a first non-binding assessment. 

This assessment came in less than the DBT offer.  Both parties were limited to 3 pages of A4 for submissions and a very limited time to address the panel directly and they made several incorrect assumptions within that assessment that the claimant has no way of challenging.  DBT have since reinstated their offer that was available prior to the panel assessment, and either I am to accept that offer that I am already advised does not meet the objective of full and fair redress or proceed to the next stage of the dispute resolution process, which is a 2nd panel assessment, that this time is ‘legally binding’.  By doing so I now must put at risk a significant six-figure sum of the offer akin to what can only be described as playing red or black in a casino game to have the claim reviewed by Sir Ross Cranston.  No claimant should be going backwards in their offers because they had the audacity to use the dispute resolution processes available to them.  This is a similar problem to those who risk making a full assessment claim in the other schemes, as mentioned in the above paragraphs, where my offer could be lost forever.  I have an impossible decision to make, either accept an offer which is not full and fair, or risk losing a portion of that offer, so that I can potentially appeal to Sir Ross to get that offer back.  If the objective is full and fair redress those offers should always remain available to the claimant, whilst still being able to utilize the dispute resolution processes and the final appeal by ‘the reviewer.’  If the final reviewer agrees that the offer is full and fair then the claim ends, whereby if he decides the award does not meet the full and fair outcome, he can recommend an award that does.  The Minister suggested I could remove the risk by accepting some heads of loss but by doing so I then lose the right to have those reviewed by the final reviewer, but if I don’t accept them, I risk losing them at the next panel stage.  Having spoken to several of the legal representatives of the claimants in this scheme, they say people are already surrendering because they cannot continue with the adversarial nature of the scheme.  How many claimants are realistically going to ever be able to reach the final reviewer if they are faced with such an impossible decision?  This will allow the Department to say that the claims have been settled in a full and fair manner because very few claims have reached the stage of Sir Ross Cranston, when they could not reach him without a substantial risk to their offers.  I accept however if the 1st panel assessment comes in higher than the DBT offer, this risk is no longer an issue.

As we have seen with the introduction of Sir Gary Hickinbottom a respected former High Court Judge whose role is to both case manage and hold hearings on complex pecuniary losses in the Overturned Conviction and HCRS schemes, claimant representatives have praised this progress.  There needs to be a similar setup in the GLO and HSS schemes if we are to see redress paid promptly and which is both full and fair.

After the announcements of previous compensation hearings, we saw a flurry of activity in the days and hours leading up to those hearings, which cannot be a coincidence.  Since it is rapidly approaching two years since the interim report was released on compensation it is vital in my view that the inquiry holds a further hearing before the release of the final report so it can consider issues that have not been addressed and new concerns that are appearing on an almost monthly basis across all the redress schemes.  The inquiry must see contemporaneous evidence to ensure the final report is able to reach a balanced and focussed conclusion along with the necessary recommendations made.  Claimants are mentally and physically exhausted, with evidence to the Business and Trade Committee that these redress schemes are making people ill.  Several people have contacted me directly to share their frustration and that they are unable to continue their claims for redress.

The inquiry has provided not only a place for victims to socialise with each other it has provided them with real hope that they will finally see some kind of justice and recompense for all their suffering.  It has shown that no stone will be left unturned in that quest for the truth, and built up a rare form of trust with victims where they believe the inquiry will deliver for them.

Yours Sincerely,

Christopher Head OBE

Last night ITV Drama star Toby Jones appeared on the Graham Norton show with stand in presenter Claudia Winkleman.  He talked about how real life hero Sir Alan Bates is a phenomenal man and some MP's and leaders could learn from the attributes he has.  Watch the clip I put up on X earlier :- 

https://x.com/chrish9070/status/1895903815838372005

Finally tonight on Britain's Got Talent, a choir called "Hear our Voice" setup by former Postmaster Mark Wildblood appears in front of the Judges on ITV.  Do tune in from 7pm to watch and support them.  Here is sneak preview I put online earlier :-

https://x.com/chrish9070/status/1895863167869141166

Please keep supporting the Postmasters and all those affected.