Witness Name: Ms Louisa Powell
Statement No.: WITNO214_01
IN THE POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF MS LOUISA POWELL
L, MS LOUISA POWELL, will say as follows...
Introduction
1am grateful to the Chair to be invited to provide a “human impact” statement,
concerning the physical, psychological, emotional, reputational and financial
consequences to me and my family of being held responsible for shortfalls shown by
the Horizon IT system and Post Office Limited’s actions toward me and my family.
The initial paragraphs below provide a brief summary of my background, and provide
context to the detail of the human impact of the Horizon scandal on me and my
family. This statement does not reflect a full account of my experiences or those of
my family and if necessary or required I will provide further witness statement
evidence.
I grew up in Worcester and I moved to Dines Green when I was 17 with my husband.
I live with my husband; we have been married for 21 years and we live a short walk
away from the Dines Green post office. I am a mother and grandmother. I have three
daughters, my eldest is 25 and she lives with her son who is 6. I have twins aged 17
and they live at home with me and my husband.
Background prior to appointment as SPM
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I have a background in retail.
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Before i worked in the post office, I worked in the adjoining retail store for years.
Jran the shop under the previous owner before Linda Little took over and I loved it.
I am a people’s person so I loved working in the shop and being involved in the
community.
Decision to become a post office manager
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I was the manager of Dines Green post office, and the subpostmistress was Linda
Little whom I worked very closely with.
Linda has seen this statement and confirm that the content of it is true.
1 was the shop manager; I had always wanted to work in the Post Office, It was a
trusted brand and having run the shop for so many years i was used to handling
money. I used to balance the tills and I was never once short. I was good at handling
money and confident in my abilities.
When Linda took over, in 2013 she trained me in the post office.
Getting trained in the post office felt like the natural progression for me. It allowed
me to be involved in both the shop and the post office and I became a pillar of the
community.
This was a long-term career plan for me. I wanted to work in the Post Office up until
retirement, I loved it that much, and I think I would have worked beyond retirement.
Training and Support on the Horizon system
14.
I did not receive any formal training from the Post Office themselves.
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I was trained as an assistant in the post office by the previous subpostmaster and
then I received further training from Linda, the subpostmistress, when she took over
in 2013.
Horizon Helpline
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Linda Little (the subpostmistress) and I telephoned the Helpline about alleged
shortfalls quite often. Most of time, Linda reported the alleged shortfalls but any
time I reported them, the Helpline told me that I had to make it good and settle it by
cash-or centrally on the system.
I was given the impression by the Helpline that there was nothing they could do
when an alleged shortfall arose.
I recall one occasion where Linda and I were told that the Helpline would telephone
us back, and we waited until 11pm for this call. As it was getting late, we telephoned
them, and we were informed that the Helpline closed at 9pm.
I do not recall ever receiving a further call back after this.
In the end, it became clear the Helpline would not be able to assist us in resolving
the alleged shortfalls, so eventually my contact with the Helpline in relation to
alleged shortfalls diminished.
I remember myself and Linda telephoning the Helpline about an alleged shortfall
that we had settled by cheque for around £400. We understood that in making the
alleged shortfall good by cheque we had to telephone the Helpline to process it
through the system. We managed to get the cheque on the system, but it did not
process correctly so stayed there. We stayed at the branch until around 10pm and
spent hours on to the Helpline who could not work out how it was processed.
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22. In the end, we managed to resolve it on the system.
23. When I returned to the branch the following day, the cheque was still showing on
the system and Linda telephoned the Helpline multiple times and was told to put it
back through the system which meant further shortfalls showed on the system. We
settled this centrally on the system on the understanding Post Office would
investigate this further.
Shortfalls
24. In this section, I set out in very brief detail my experience of shortfalls arising from
deficiencies in the Horizon IT System, and Post Office Limited’s actions as a result.
This is only a brief introduction to those matters, in order to provide necessary
context for the explanation of the human impact which follows.
25. I would estimate that throughout my position in the branch, I paid (or Post Office
deducted) in excess of £20,000.
Shortfall 1
26. An alleged shortfall arose on the system in excess of £572.85 and after checking
through the system we opted to make it good by cheque on the system so that the
accounts balanced. The cheque was not processed correctly on the system and the
Helpline could not resolve this. It was repeatedly processed through the system, so I
believe we probably made this good about 3 times.
27. Eventually, Sue Gaffney (a Post Office auditor and trainer) attended the branch to
help look into the issue with the cheque and the issues on Horizon. She came into
the branch and spent a short amount of time with us. Sue told us that she would ask
her colleague, Judy Boulderson to come into the branch as she would be able to
help.
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A few days later Judy came into the branch and got her laptop out next to our
system. She spent a long time looking at the issue with the cheque and said that
from what she could tell it should have been showing as a surplus, not a loss on the
system. Judy told me that she had cleared the cheque and the alleged shortfall on
the system and asked Linda to make it good by card that day. Linda did so.
Judy also conducted a quick cash check at the branch and she said that everything
was fine, but we never received a formal audit report or anything to confirm that the
issue was resolved in writing.
When Judy was at the branch she told me not to ring the Helpline any more with
regard to alleged shortfalls, but that we should just contact her directly. I therefore
took her advice and when another alleged shortfall arose on the system the
following month I tried to contact her. I have sent Judy several emails and
telephoned her several times to raise the issue and she did not respond to me.
In addition, we were never told by the Post Office that we could have alleged
shortfalls investigated. The standard advice from the Helpline was that we had to
make it good, so I never knew there was an option to have it formally investigated. I
did think that in settling an alleged shortfall centrally on the system this would be at
the very least reviewed by the Post Office, but I now understand this is not the case.
Shortfall 2
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An alleged shortfall arose on or around May 2017 when two MoneyGram
transactions were refunded amounting to £1,553.00 and £1,303.00. The customer
had paid on her card, so we refunded the money to her card. When we were
balancing on the system, I noticed that there was an alleged shortfall of around the
same amounts showing in cash. I telephoned the Helpline and they were adamant
that I must have refunded it in cash. I checked the receipt I had printed following the
transaction and it said that it was refunded by card.
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Eventually, the Helpline explained that the transactions had been processed twice
and refunded three times which meant there was an issue. They told me that it
would be put into the suspense account until I contacted the customer.
Luckily, I knew the customer personally, so I was able to contact her to check how
many times the money had left her bank, and how many times it had been refunded.
She confirmed both had been processed only once. I told the Helpline about this but
they told me that it was our fault and we had made an error. We spoke to the
Helpline numerous times about this and it was never resolved.
Eventually the error notice came through on the system and Linda received a letter
demanding repayment of the alleged shortfall. I called the Post Office on receipt of
this letter but they would not listen, and the shortfall had to be made good. I believe
it was shown as a loss during this period.
Shortfall 3
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I was having problems with the ATM and online connectivity at the branch. A
customer came in and tried to withdraw £80 cash from her account. The transaction
did not work correctly on Horizon system but the customer showed me that the
money had been deducted from her account so I had no choice but to pay the £80
cash to her as I could see that it had come out of her account, and I thought I would
have been able to get it sorted through the helpline.
Shortfall 4
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On 27 September 2017 following an audit there was an alleged shortfall of
£64,648.31 (on the audit report) but according to the Post Office’s letter dated 17
October 2017 it amounted to £67,230.65. Angela Green of the Post Office verbally
confirmed that this would not be recovered pending the conclusion of the
investigation into the alleged shortfall, but she has failed to confirm this in writing.
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This alleged shortfall was discovered at the audit of the branch, so I had not
previously dealt with it in the accounts.
Generally, when alleged shortfalls were shown on the system when I was completing
a balance, I tried to check back through the transactions and spent time re-counting
the cash and the stock. I then opted to settle the alleged shortfall by cheque on the
system, write it out and post it to the Post Office for it to be processed.
Eventually, the alleged shortfalls started becoming unsustainable, so I opted to make
the alleged shortfall good by cheque on the system and write the cheque out to
balance. However, I did not pay the cheque in, in the hopes that the problem might
resolve itself in the following 4 weeks.
On some occasions, I did opt to settle the alleged shortfalls centrally and I
understood that in doing this the Post Office would investigate the alleged shortfall.
The alleged shortfall was then deducted from Linda’s wages, and I would have my
wages reduced to cover this.
Audits and investigations
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The auditors attended the branch without notice on the morning of 27 September
2017. I panicked straight away because I knew that we had not been able to make
good ail of the alleged shortfalls that had arisen in recent months.
The auditors began conducting the audit and we were not given the opportunity to
verify their findings.
Eventually, we were told that there was an alleged shortfall of around £5,000 in
stamps. I was adamant that this could not be the case, as I knew what stock we had
in branch. I pushed back on this, and they agreed to re-count it. They returned with a
figure of £2,800 short. I was getting more and more frustrated and upset because
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they were not listening to me. I eventually told them that I did not agree with the
figure, but I felt as if we had no option but to accept it.
Once the audit had been conducted, we were told that there was an alleged shortfall
of around £30,000 in the £20 notes. We were aware of this, so we told the auditors
that this was expected.
However, the overall shortfall, we were told, was around £62,000. I do not recall the
auditors going through the breakdown of the alleged shortfall with us in any more
detail.
Linda received a telephone call from her contracts manager, Mr Paul Williams, later
that day. He confirmed that she was suspended from the branch. Mr Williams
advised Linda to seek advice and support from the NFSP Union and that he would
call her again the following day.
I found the whole experience traumatising. I was extremely anxious and upset when
the auditors were at the branch and the auditors were not sympathetic to our
situation. The auditors made me feel invisible and completely disregarded our
concerns about what was happening with the computer system.
I had asked the auditors to investigate the alleged shortfall, but they did not listen
and did not try to engage with me. It felt as if they were at the branch for hours and
as if they were looking for us to be at fault. I felt completely helpless, and I have not
been the same since the day of the audit.
Linda and I have written to Post Office to demand a full investigation into the alleged
shortfall, which is now stated as £64,648.31 on the audit report and £67,230.65 in
Angela Green’s letter to Linda dated 17 October 2017.
We were told by Mr Williams, the area manager that he was investigating this and
that he has previously sent a substantive response to us. We have not received this
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and have made several attempts to chase this from him since. He has not responded
to us, other than to arrange for the branch to be defunded.
I have never been presented with any evidence that the Post Office have taken any
steps to investigate the alleged shortfalls at the branch either before or after the
branch was closed.
Suspension and Termination
52. I was not suspended, but I was told my Mr Williams that I could not be appointed as
temporary subpostmistress or work in the branch. Therefore, I consider myself
informally suspended.
Human Impact
53. Linda Little and I had to use the profits from the retail side of the shop to help cover
the shortfalls. This made it very hard to restock the shop and in the end we had
hardly any products to sell.
54. Linda and I had to take out Provident loans and Shopacheck loans in order to cover
the shortfalls. I am still in debt to this day with the Provident.
55. l have to keep paying off and renewing the Shopacheck loan because the interest is
so high, and I just do not have enough money to live so I have to keep renewing it
every year.
56. I also had to borrow money from my mother and Grandmother to cover the
shortfalls, and I have never been able to repay this as I cannot afford to do so.
Therefore, my family have suffered and are also out of pocket because I was
required to contribute to making good the shortfalls.
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Every bit of spare money we had went into the post office only to end up being lost
again. This had a very big impact on me and Linda. Linda had to put so much money
into the post office to cover the shortfalls that both of us were left without a wage.
There is no money left. It took everything from us, not just money. If anything could
break a person, Horizon could, and it did.
It was a constant battle with Horizon. I was always sad and ended up becoming very
depressed. No matter how many times I called the helpline they were always
useless. I was given reference numbers and would ring back and speak to someone
different who would give me different advice and they always made it into a bigger
problem than it already was.
In the end I was too scared to ring the helpline. They did not seem to know what
they were doing, and it was extremely frustrating for me. I would often end up in
tears in the office and this drove me to taking Diazepam to help me with the panic.
Customers witnessed me crying in the office going through piles of receipts trying
find a mistake, I look back now and think how unprofessional I must have looked but,
that’s how much it affected me.
Not being able to get the help I needed caused me to blame myself even though
deep down I knew it was not my fault. To give you an example, Linda and I decided
to work separately to figure out where the money was going/who was at fault. We
decided I would work 2 weeks by myself in the Post Office and Linda would do the
same the next 2 weeks. In the 2 weeks we each had off, we had nothing to do with
either the Post Office or the shop in an attempt to figure out what was happening
and who was at fault. I worked the first 2 weeks by myself again experiencing money
shortfalls and missing stamps. I was devastated by this, I thought I was the problem.
Then Linda did her 2 weeks all by herself and the same thing happened. She had cash
shortfalls and missing stamps. The same thing happened to both of us, and it was at
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this point we realised that something was seriously wrong with the Horizon System.
But we couldn’t get any help or find out where the missing money and stamps were
going.
We both ended up in a very bad place, we were frightened and stuck in limbo not
knowing what to do.
Unless you are put in such a position it really is impossible to imagine what it feels
like to be held responsible for shortfalls that are no fault of your own and impossible
to prove.
It is draining, mentally and physically. I was exhausted constantly looking for the
errors to explain the missing money. It made me anxious, and I became depressed
unable to shift this constant feeling of dread.
It took over my life. Horizon destroyed what should have been some of the happiest
years of my life, spending time with my husband, raising our children and watching
them grow up. Instead, I was looking for money that had become invisible once it
entered the Horizon system. It was swallowed up and vanished, never to be seen
again.
1 felt empty inside, I had no way of proving it wasn’t my fault and it completely
destroyed me.
When the auditors closed the post office, word got out and people in the local
community accused us of stealing the money.
My neighbour, a colleague! _ _} who worked in the retail side of the shop told
me that people had been writing comments on Facebook abut Linda and I taking all
the money. This was very hard to take in, people in the community, our own
customers didn’t believe us.
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The Worcester news also reported on the sudden closure of the Dines Green post
office which just added fuel to the fire.
I became very anxious and fell into a deep state of depression.
I saw my doctor regularly during this time. This was a very rough period of my life, I
started taking extra Diazepam, I was put on antidepressants; sertraline and
Pregabalin and I just slept my days away.
Every evening I would go to Linda’s house and put all the evidence we had together
to try and work out what went so wrong. We would drink alcohol as we worked our
way through boxes of Horizon paperwork.
We did this until all hours into the night and we would end up drinking ourselves into
oblivion. 1 would often just fall asleep at Linda’s and wake up not remembering a
thing.
tt started out just sharing a bottle of Bacardi between the two of us and then it
escalated to a bottle each and then we added four cans of cider to the mix. There
were times that I drunk so much I would wet the bed and the next morning I would
wake up lying in my own urine.
Looking back it is so hard to believe I could drink so much night after night.
My husband tried to make me see how out of control my drinking was getting and
how much it was affecting him and the children.
My husband became depressed by all of this, and I feel a huge amount of guilt for
not going home some nights. And the nights I did go home my poor children ended
up seeing their mother in such an awful state, I cannot stand even just thinking
about it now.
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I was a complete mess. I had turned into an alcoholic.
I struggle to talk about the torture, torment and anger the Post Office has caused
me. Providing me with no help or support and not believing that their system was at
fault.
When I was not drinking, I would just hide away and sleep because the anxiety I was
suffering with was too much to handle.
I remember one day my husband decided to take us for a family day out to try and
distract me, unfortunately I ended up breaking my knee and shattering my leg. I was
hospitalised for several weeks, and I had to learn to walk again. This stopped my
drinking.
If it wasn’t for this, I dread to think what would have happened because I don’t know
what would have broken the vicious cycle of drinking myself into oblivion night after
night.
I loved my job. It got me up and out every day, I am a people person and I loved
chatting away with customers and meeting new people. To have all this taken away
from me was a shock to my system and I struggled to cope with it.
The rumours circulating about me also had a detrimental effect on my children. They
no longer wanted to go out in public as they were hearing all these comments about
their mum and the post office.
To this day my children still refuse to step foot anywhere near the shop.
My daughter does not go out at all. This has had a huge impact on her, the rumours
made her very anxious, and she now suffers with severe anxiety.
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89. It upsets me just talking about it, no child should have to experience what my
children did. 1 blame myself for my daughter’s anxiety and the guilt I feel is crippling.
It is so hard to watch your children suffer.
Conclusion
90. This experience destroyed my life, and it was close to destroying my relationship
with my husband. I became so depressed and turned into an alcoholic. It impacted
my children so much so that they didn’t want to go out in public and my daughter
still suffers with severe anxiety to this day.
91. I am still in debt because of all the shortfalls we had to repay, and I live in constant
fear that I will be pursued for even more money. It is a horrible feeling and a horrible
way to live.
92. I hate the Post Office, they are an awful, corrupt institution who have destroyed my
life and there is no reasonable explanation as to why they put us through everything
they did.
93. The lack of human decency they have is astounding. They behave like robots; they
have no compassion and don’t give you the time of day. They never once listened to
me or gave me the chance to provide an explanation.
94. I want the Post office to admit that the computer system was flawed, and that
Horizon was responsible for the missing money and the Post Office covered it all up.
95. I would like there to be justice. I want it to be clear that the Post Office were at fault
and that they knew the system was flawed.
96. I would also like everyone to receive the compensation they deserve.
Statement of Truth
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I believe the contents of this statement to be true.
bated: pul: \. LORL :
Louisa Powell
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