The Horizon Shortfall Scheme compensates people affected but not convicted of a crime by the Post Office.
If you were one of more than 2,400 applicants, Hudgell Solicitors can help ensure you receive the damages you deserve. The scheme offers a minimum settlement of £75,000.
As solicitor Neil Hudgell explains, a review by our expert team can result in substantially increased compensation awards.
Video Transcript: Post Office Horizon Shortfall Scheme Compensation
Welcome to Righting Wrongs here at Hudgell Solicitors.
I’m Keith Phillips, and with me is Neil Hudgell, executive chairman, who represents hundreds of victims of the Post Office Scandal.
Neil, we’re here to delve a little deeper into exactly what’s going on with the various compensation schemes and what’s happening at the Post Office inquiry.
Well, first of all, I wanna start with the positives. Many more people are now getting the compensation awards they’ve waited decades for as a result of new government legislation this year.
I think where we would say the wins are being made at the moment are in the Horizon Shortfall Scheme on a sort of case-specific exceptional basis, I think there were some significant problems with the scheme as a whole, but we’re finding some fairly sizable victories if you, for want of better terminology in cases that have been longstanding and have taken a long time to progress to this point and bringing resolution for those people at sums that far exceed the original sums that were on the table with the new exoneration process.
There are increasing numbers of people that are getting through that scheme and getting paid in a timely order. I mean, there was a slow start to it, you know, still, some people haven’t got their letters of exoneration yet, but the speed of the process is increasing, so, there are over 250 people of about 900 that are eligible, of actually had a payment.
There’s about 90 something that have been fully paid out and within those two categories, most of those clients are clients of Hudgells, so we’ve got some people who’ve within a small number of months have gone from exoneration to payout to being able to move on with their lives. It’s not everybody and it’s nowhere near enough but it is a sort of positive indicator of movement in the right direction.
Looking at the Horizon Shortfall Scheme…
Can you give examples where those who are who have applied for an award were offered an acceptably low compensation awards?
I think my take on the rise in Horizon Shortfall Scheme is that it’s had a rocky journey since it was launched four years ago. The majority of claims initially were settled without legal advice. The claims that we have taken routinely secure significantly increased offers and in some instances, hundreds of thousands of pounds more.
I think I’d go on a limb and say there isn’t, there hasn’t been one case that we’ve picked up where we haven’t been confident of upside to some extent. So, you know, just the experience of that indicates there’s been a problem with the scheme and I think that when we last had the director of the scheme in the witness box at the inquiry, he was was willing to concede that we’d given a number of examples for the inquiry that showed the difference in position from the original offer to a revised offer to a current offer.
And in most instances, those offers are still not sufficient. So there’s very clear evidence that there have been under settlements probably on a fairly significant scale.
Can you give examples of cases where once clients of yours have taken legal advice where the compensation offer has been substantially increased?
Plenty of examples. Yeah. And again, we submitted evidence to the public inquiry with a table of about 20-odd cases, and there was one case that went from £6,000 pounds to £130 something thousand pounds.
Other similar examples, um, settle one only this week that had gone from £40,000 to £170,000.
Those are not unique exceptional cases. These are turning into the norm, and again that’s why it’s vitally important that people take advice.
Neil, thank you very much.
Thank you for listening to Righting Wrongs.
