According to members of his personal staff, Nick Read has overseen a decline in trust for the Post Office, not just as a result of the public outcry over the Post Office Horizon scandal.
Chief executive Read will appear before the Post Office scandal open inquiry over three days this week, beginning on 9 October, in phase seven of the two-year , inquiry. This comes only days after a letter from Post Office whistleblowers was published that made damning claims about Read’s leadership.
The last sentence of the letter,” Read cannot continue”, was written in May this year, before he announced his resignation next month.
Read succeeded Paula Vennells  as CEO in September 2019, just as the subpostmasters ‘ High Court group litigation order ( GLO ) lawsuit alleged that Fujitsu’s Horizon IT system was to blame for the accounting losses that were caused by branch operators.
His second action was to reach a settlement with the 555 claimants in the High Court case, which was assigned to modernizing the Post Office. He eventually oversaw the creation of schemes to offer victims financial redress, which have left some harmed subpostmasters waiting for years after their compensation claims are resolved. Read’s rise to the top of the regional consciousness came at the start of this year as a result of the outcry over the ITV drama Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office’s broadcast.
In a letter to open inquiry chair Wyn Williams and inquiry barristers, Post Office chairman Nigel Railton, and MPs, the whistleblowers criticized an continued cover-up at the Post Office, as revealed by Computer Weekly.
” To most of us, Read represents an insufficient, selfish, self-interested man, and like]Paula] Vennells, he cannot truly relate to the human side of the Post Office, the hard-working and the fair subpostmasters and employees”, they wrote. ” We are extremely disturbed and quite unhappy. Please help”.
Collapse in trust
According to the whistleblowers, the Post Office has “plummeted from its position as Britain’s fifth most trusted brand to 135th place.” They claimed that this is” not simply down to the inquiry and the outcry over Horizon ( as Read would like us to believe )”.
Before Read left the position, they wrote,” It is quite obvious that we will never change the Post Office culture under his leadership.” Read is not trusted by his own employees, by subpostmasters, by members of the public and by the UK at big”.
As postmasters of hundreds of subpostmasters, Read has earned more than £3 million, while hundreds of others are still waiting for monetary compensation for the pain the Post Office has caused them. When he testifies at the inquiry this week, he will have the opportunity to make the case for his leadership record.
It’s a similar tale to Vennells ‘ exit from the Post Office, which had just lost a court case against subpostmasters and lost$ 100 million in taxpayer money as a result. The case demonstrated that subpostmasters had been unfairly held accountable for accounting blunders brought on by computer errors, and that they had frequently been prosecuted.
She had overseen a cover-up of the Post Office scandal, which began to crumble with the subpostmasters ‘ High Court victory. Vennells was also able to leave in 2019 with a sizable payout and was given a CBE for her work at the Post Office, though this has since been taken away from her.
Read the entire letter to the whistleblower around.
The Post Office scandal, which was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealed the accounts of seven subpostmasters and the issues they encountered as a result of Horizon accounting software, which caused the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history ( see below list of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009 ).
• Even read:  , What you need to know about the Horizon scandal , •
• Even watch:  , ITV’s documentary – , Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The true story , •
• Even read:  , Post Office and Fujitsu malevolence and incompetence means big taxpayers ‘ bill , •
