‘Dim’ PO chief ‘like dealing with mosquito’, says former colleague
PAULA VENNELLS has been described as “dim” by a former colleague who likened her to a “mosquito”, it has been claimed.
It comes as the former Post Office chief executive has been accused of covering up the Horizon IT scandal even as software faults were exposed.
More than 700 sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted over a 16-year period due to bugs and glitches in the system which caused shortfalls to be reported that did not exist.
Ms Vennells handed back her CBE last week as pressure began to mount against the 64-year-old.
The mother of two has said she is expected to give evidence to the public inquiry “in the coming months”. However, a source close to an inquiry by forensic accountants Second Sight – which Ms Vennells commissioned soon after she took on the chief executive role in 2012 – gave an unflattering description of her to a national newspaper.
The source told the Daily Mail they found her to be “over-promoted”, “dim” and working with her was “like dealing with a mosquito”.
They added: “If you’re going to take that top job with the bucks that go with it, you’d better be as sharp as a tack. And she wasn’t.”
The same anonymous source also told the newspaper that they were shocked at the number of errors being made within the Post Office as an organisation. “I remember thinking they would be better off making decisions with a dart board as they were getting everything wrong all the time,” they added.
The eldest of three children, Ms Vennells grew up in Denton, near Manchester. Her mother was a bookkeeper, while her father was an industrial chemist who became a research fellow at Manchester University.
She was educated privately at Manchester High School and went on to study French and Russian at Bradford
University, before being accepted into Unilever’s graduate scheme.
Ms Vennells lives with her husband John, an engineer, in a £2million farmhouse in Bedfordshire, and skis and sails in her spare time, according to the Mail.
She left the Post Office in 2019, months before the High Court ruled that Horizon was not “remotely robust” and had “bugs, errors and defects”.
Pressure is mounting for her to hand back the £2.2million in bonuses she received during her tenure as chief executive.
A Post Office spokesperson declined to respond to any comments about its former chief executive.
A statement read: “We fully share the aims of the current Public Inquiry, set up to get to the truth of what happened in the past and accountability.
“It’s for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions after consideration of all the evidence on the issues it is examining.”
‘I remember thinking that they would be better off making decisions with a dart board’