Why West Boldon Horizon scandal campaigner says the Post Office compensation scheme is not a success yet

Christopher Head, who was only 18 when he took over the West Bolden branch in 2006, said the group litigation order (GLO) process could have “wrapped up a year ago” if the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) had listened to feedback from claimants.

The scheme was set up following the high-profile legal action launched by Sir Alan Bates and 554 others against the Post Office in the High Court between 2017 and 2019.

A total of 492 sub-postmasters have been entitled to apply for redress with the remaining 63 told to apply through a different process because of their wrongful criminal convictions.

The Horizon accounting system, run by Japanese firm Fujitsu, made it look like money was missing from sub-postmasters' branch accounts.

This resulted in around 1,000 people being wrongly prosecuted and convicted between 1999-2015.

The DBT has now said the GLO scheme will close to new applicants on July 31 with a view to concluding on December 31 following “successful delivery”.

Mr Head, who became one of the country’s youngest postmasters, said: “That's the department saying it's been successful and that to me comes back to a fundamental problem we've had with Post Office and DBT all the time, which is that they are marking their own homework.

“They're going to say ‘we've received this many claims and we've paid them so that means it's been successful’.

"But what I call successful is has the scheme successfully paid full and fair redress to those people?

“The department class full and fair redress being paid when someone accepts an offer. But there might be various reasons why someone might accept an offer.

“So I don't see why it should be DBT that should say that it has been successful, it should be the claimants.

“I would honestly like every single person to be asked the question ‘do you believe you have received redress that is full and fair?’ and just place it in a yes and no table – that will tell you whether the scheme has been successful.

"In my view, in some cases it has been successful because we have seen deliveries of redress that are above what people have claimed.

"But there are other people I know who have said 'I've had enough, I've literally had enough' and therefore the scheme might have been completed rather than successful.

"But there is still a number of people who have not received what the department set out to achieve, which is full and fair redress."

Mr Head, of West Boldon, was falsely accused of stealing more than £80,000 before the criminal case against him was dropped.

He said his claim took the longest to be settled, spanning 744 days, after he felt forced to “sit on” it to avoid potentially losing money by taking his case to an appeal.

He could eventually proceed after the scheme was changed to incorporate a “best offer” policy so that he did not lose out if the appeal offered him a smaller amount.

DBT said that, as of March 31, 90% of GLO scheme claimants had received final redress with £223million distributed.