Post Office inquiry: Wells ex-postmistress blames people 'not computers'

A former sub-postmistress who says she was made to feel like a criminal after being falsely accused of stealing £12,000 has laid the blame for her ordeal firmly on the Post Office and IT firm Fujitsu.

Gail Ward, from Wells in Somerset, was taken to court, convicted and sentenced to community service. She was one of hundreds of people wrongly prosecuted after a faulty computer system called Horizon made it look like money was missing from accounts.

"People keep saying it's the Horizon scandal, but Horizon is a computer system," she said.

"Horizon didn't summons me. Horizon didn't ruin my life - that was people, people did that to people, and they knew they were doing it."

Mrs Ward ran the former post office on Priory Road in Wells for five years and remembers the day investigators came into her shop.

"They arrived at 08:30 in the morning, they came into our shop and I thought they would help us correct the wrong. They didn't," she said.

"Personally I think they knew there was a problem being reported elsewhere, but you were made to feel guilty and like a criminal straight away.

"I was there talking to them for three or four hours and they just kept saying 'where's the money, what have you bought' and I just replied 'I've done nothing wrong'."

Gail Ward ran the branch in Wells when she was convicted as part of the Post Office scandal

An inquiry into the scandal, which started in February 2021, earlier heard from ex-investigator Stephen Bradshaw who denied that 'Mafia' style behaviour was used towards wrongly accused sub-postmasters.

After being accused of stealing £12,000 Mrs Ward managed to save up and paid all the money in full out of her own pocket, but she was still convicted and sentenced to community service.

"I'll never forgive the Post Office, no matter how much compensation or when my conviction is quashed," she told BBC Radio Somerset.

The day before she was summoned to court, her solicitor called her to tell her to pack a bag in case she was sent to prison.

The morning of the court hearing she said goodbye to her 13-year-old son.

"It was horrendous. He went to school that morning not knowing if one of his parents would be there when he came home," Mrs Ward said.

Mrs Ward was sentenced to 150 hours of community service and ordered to clean trains at Cranmore Station.

"We'd be taken away on a minibus, all of us convicts, and I'd say I hadn't done anything wrong - people just wouldn't believe me," she said.

"When we arrived at the train station, we'd have our tasks and have to clean the area and you weren't allowed to talk to anyone. It was a horrific time.

"People avoided you in the street and pointed at you - it ruined our reputation as a post office but also my reputation as a citizen of Wells."

The government now plans to clear the names of hundreds of people wrongly convicted in the Post Office Horizon software scandal.

'Ruined reputation'

"We lost everything," Mrs Ward said.

"We went to Cheddar car boot every Sunday and sold all our personal belongings to make ends meet.

"I often walk past the old building and think that's where our bedroom used to be above the shop, that's what they took from us.

"My son and daughter had kids saying to them 'you must know where your mum's put the money' - it was horrendous to see them suffer too."

Gail's daughter Kerry said it was 'tough' to see her parents go through what happened

Mrs Ward's daughter, Kerry Prestidge, said: "There was a couple of locals that gave us food parcels every week to help support us.

"For mum and dad, it really helped supplement what they could provide for us.

"We got moved into rented accommodation - it was hard to survive week by week."

A spokesperson for the Post Office said they are "doing all we can to right the wrongs of the past".

"Both Post Office and Government are committed to providing full, fair and final compensation for the people affected," a spokesperson added.

Fujitsu, which developed the software at the heart of the affair, said it was sorry for its role in sub-postmasters' suffering.

Mrs Ward is planning for retirement soon and said: "Here I am still fighting. But I'm not on my own, there's a lot of us."