'I used my savings to cover Post Office shortfalls'

Kym Ledgar received about £15,000 in compensation from the Post Office in 2022

A former sub-postmistress paid thousands of pounds from her savings as a result of issues with the Post Office’s Horizon computer system.

Kym Ledgar had to write cheques for as much as £5,000 to cover accounting shortfalls while she was running a branch in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent.

She later submitted a claim for about £15,000 and has been compensated the full amount.

The Post Office said it was doing all it can to “right the wrongs of the past”.

Ms Ledgar, from Oakhill, told BBC Radio Stoke she started to notice shortfalls on the Horizon computer system in 2002.

She lost £200 a fortnight, according to the software’s figures, initially for a period of six months.

“I can’t tell you how demoralising it is because you just think you’re going mad and what on earth could you be doing wrong?,"she said.

Later, there was a shortfall of £5,000 in one week and while she said her employer was sympathetic, she was told the money needed to be in the next week.

“So I wrote a £5,000 cheque of our savings to make it good,” she said.

“I’d got a family of four and it impacts on them of course. You can’t do the things or buy the things that you would have done.

“You’d hope against hope that one day it [the money] would turn up and it never did.”

The Post Office Horizon scandal, which saw hundreds of staff falsely accused of theft and false accounting, was thrust into the spotlight recently due to the ITV show Mr Bates vs The Post Office.

Ms Ledgar said she found the show “very distressing” and urged the people still fighting to not give up.

She left her branch in 2014 and was compensated in 2022.

A spokesperson for the Post Office said it fully shared the aims of the ongoing public inquiry.

They said: “We are deeply aware of the human cost of the scandal and are doing all we can to right the wrongs of the past, as far as that is possible.

“Both Post Office and the government are committed to providing full, fair and final compensation for the people affected.”