Stress of faulty Post Office system ‘nearly killed me’, says York subpostmistress

A former subpostmistress said the stress of dealing with the Post Office’s faulty IT system “nearly killed” her after it repeatedly caused shortfalls in her accounts, an inquiry has heard.

Wendy Martin, who opened her own Post Office in York in February 2015, said she immediately started facing problems with the computer systems, including transactions disappearing.

More than 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses (SPMs) were prosecuted between 2000 and 2014, based on information from the Horizon IT system, installed and maintained by Fujitsu.

But in December 2019, a High Court judge ruled that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.

Ms Martin, who encountered shortfalls but was never prosecuted, told an inquiry into the scandal on Thursday that she was forced to close her branch after just 20 months due to stress caused by the issues with the IT system.

The former subpostmistress said she had borrowed £22,000 from the bank as well as money from her family and used her savings to open the business.

But the computers immediately started to crash on a daily basis with connection constantly dropping out and transactions going missing, the inquiry was told.

Ms Martin said the stress of being liable for the shortfalls while fighting to get the Post Office to fix the issue caused her health to dramatically deteriorate.

“It nearly killed me,” she said, adding that she suffered sleepless nights, constant kidney infections and a suspected stroke after closing the branch in early 2016.

“It devastated our lives and we need repaying and we need compensation,” she said.

Ms Martin, who is now thousands of pounds in debt, said she “still lost everything” despite never being prosecuted, which means she may not receive compensation.