Post Office Horizon victim can now buy own home

Janet Skinner was wrongly jailed for theft

A victim of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal who was wrongly jailed for theft and lost her home has said she can now buy a house after she was offered an interim compensation payment.

Janet Skinner was wrongly convicted of false accounting in 2007 and sentenced to nine months in prison after the faulty software said £59,000 had gone missing from her branch account in Hull.

The mother-of-two lost her home, her livelihood and served two months in prison.

The government said the amount of compensation given to postmasters had increased five-fold to more than £1bn, as part of an ongoing commitment to deliver justice to victims as quickly as possible.

Ms Skinner, who was temporarily paralysed after the stress of her ordeal, said she had turned down an offer amounting to 15% of her compensation claim back in September.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Saturday, she said there had been an update.

"My legal team received an email saying that they were offering me a large interim payment, which, to be honest, was actually more than the settlement that they were offering me weeks before," Ms Skinner said.

Ms Skinner declined to say how much the payment was.

However, she said: "I can finally move from a house to a home, and I haven't had that.

"I lost mine in 2007 so I've lived in private rented for all these years.

"It sounds like quite a small thing but it means so much to me to be able to say that it's going to be mine.

"Being able to buy a house is quite big for me, at the minute," she said.

A year after her release from prison, Ms Skinner was back in the dock facing another jail sentence as the Post Office pursued her for failing to pay "proceeds of crime".

She suffered a neurological collapse, was paralysed from the neck down and used a wheelchair for a year.

It took her two years to learn how to walk again, but she has been unable to work because of ongoing problems with her health and mobility issues.

A Department of Business and Trade spokesperson said: "We pay tribute to all the postmasters, including Janet, who suffered from the horizon scandal, which is why the amount paid to postmasters has increased five-fold to more than £1bn as part of our ongoing commitment to deliver justice to victims as swiftly as possible."

They said the government took "every effort to make full and fair offers to all claimants, and an independent dispute resolution process is available to all applicants who are not content with their offer".

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