Former subpostmasters who were suspended and had their salaries withheld can apply for compensation under the Suspension Remuneration Review scheme.
The review can ensure full awards for loss of pay, cost of loans, legal and accountancy advice, and the sale of a property at reduced value.
Solicitor Neil Hudgell, who represents victims of the Post Office Scandal, says cases need to be submitted by March 2025 and legal advice is required to assess whether offers are fair and reasonable.
Video Transcript: Post Office Suspension Remuneration 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.
Neil, not all victims of the Horizon and Capture IT systems were prosecuted or asked to pay back the missing cash.
Some postmasters were suspended from work and had their salaries withheld, now they can also be compensated under another scheme.
Yeah. And yet another scheme, the Suspension Remuneration Scheme is simply a scheme that was established after the group litigation to compensate suspension losses.
So, very often suspension led to dismissal, but sometimes suspension was an event in itself where the suspension was lifted and the subpostmaster went back to work.
But in the olden days, people were not paid during suspension. So the scheme compensates that, but it also compensates what’s called consequential losses, so losses arose because of suspension, but it’s quite a tightly defined scheme and therefore the losses need to flow from the suspension, not from anything else that followed.
So, for example, lots of suspensions where for a period of like months, so if you’re not working for four months, six months, what you might do is you might sell possessions to make ends meet, you can claim the value that you may have sold them at that’s below market rate.
If you borrowed money from family and friends, if there’s a charge attached to that, you can claim that, if you suffered mentally because of the uncertainty around the suspension, then that can be compensated.
So are a number of things that follow from just the suspension, so when somebody gets a letter ordinarily it just details “You were suspended for this many days and this is how we’ve calculated your loss.”
It’s important that people have that check because it might be that those consequential losses are actually quite significant, and you know, we’re seeing increasing numbers of people receiving these offers where in actual fact once they’ve been properly worked through and looked at, the bottom line numbers soon increase quite significantly, often two or three times.
So let’s just take a step back
So people were being suspended because of discrepancies.
Yeah.
They weren’t being paid.
Yeah.
Over what period of time was this happening and how many people were affected?
It’s difficult to know exactly how many people were affected. This happened over the Horizon period, so it’s a typical scenario of someone being suspended because of the shortfall losses we’ve seen what the effects of that are when someone has been terminated, or prosecuted.
But there will have been numerous instances where people have been reinstated sometimes on the back of taking certain steps and sometimes actually in relation to suspensions that were Horizon generated.
So there could be other reasons for suspension. So it’s a very specific discreet scheme.
Are we talking about hundreds of people who may be affected?
I’d be surprised if not
And do we know if the Post Office is actively contacting, and seeking out these people to tell them that they can be compensated?
It is a proactive process in the main, yeah.
And are you confident that the post office will reach out to all those who were effective?
Well, inevitably not, but at the end of the day, I guess it’s, we can only do what we can do, and so if our position at the minute is if people receive these offers come forward, take advice, it might look like in some senses, sort of a given that the numbers must be right, but very often than not, and I mean more generally we have conversations with the Post Office all the time around databases in relation to all the schemes and about how we get to more people to make sure that the proper victims are, tackled, approached and engaged.
For those clients that you are representing, what sort of compensation are they getting from the Post Office for their suspensions without pay?
Well, it varies from a few thousand to five figures, depending on the period of suspension, what the subpostmaster was earning and then the application of interest and there are two basis to apply interest.
We can get very complex with this. There’s a basis on which they apply. If it’s just suspension losses only, then there’s a different calculation if there are consequential losses as well.
So it becomes even more complex and even more necessary for these offers to be properly advised on.
Can you give examples of what your clients have received and what it was based on?
Again, all is very case-specific, if you’ve got a subpostmaster that nets £200 a week against somebody that nets £1,000, the numbers are that one is suspended for a month and months suspended for eight months.
Quite clearly the numbers are gonna vary greatly from £2,000, £3,000 to £10,000+ to which you then add interest, which can double the amounts to which you then add potentially consequential losses, which double them again.
So it all is very case-specific. I think a number in isolation isn’t really very informative in the context of the person who’s got the offer that’s signed in front of you.
Have the clients that you represent under the suspension remuneration review, have they been surprised by the amount of compensation they’ve ended up with?
Depends on how we define surprise because you know, surprise in a good way or surprise in a bad way. You know, I think that generally, surprise starts in a broadly negative way because they think they’re worth more or they think they earn more or the deductions that are applied are too high.
I think where the positive surprise comes in is when we can help secure them an upside on what’s sat there. So they may get X-day suspension at y which comes out at, I don’t know, I’m plucking numbers out the air, £5,000 that then translates to £10,000 when simple interest is applied.
But then when you think, when you come up with the consequential losses around the cost of borrowing during that period, or selling items at a deflated price or suffering with mental health concerns, that might then go to £20,000 or £25,000, so, a bit more pleasantly surprising that sense that where they started at 10 and they end up at £25,000, you know, there’s clearly a value in the advice that they seek.
For those people out there who think they may have a claim under the suspension remuneration review scheme, is it a straightforward process or would legal advice be beneficial?
The process of applying is straightforward, there’s a link on the Post Office website, so the relevant application, once an offer is received is the point at which advice needs to be sought for the reasons that I’ve articulated.
And how would they prove ultimately that they were suspended? Would the post office have those records?
Yeah, it’s pretty, it’s a pretty robust process of establishing, in the same way as Horizon and shortfall losses, there are eligibility checks, completed on a preliminary basis, and they tend to be quite reliable.
Is there a time limit for applying for compensation under the suspension remuneration review?
Well, as it stands, it’s important to get any application in before the end of March next year, the government do move timelines, in other schemes, there are some ongoing discussions about a guillotine end-stop date, and I think it would be safe to get the application in as soon as possible, very certainly before the end of March.
Neil, thank you very much.
And thank you for listening to Righting Wrongs.
