The Herald

PO’S former head of IT ‘blocked’ chief executive as she tried to avoid inquiry

THE Post Office’s former head of IT said she blocked Paula Vennells’ phone number after the ex-chief executive sought her help to “avoid an independen­t inquiry”.

Lesley Sewell, who struggled to contain her emotions at the beginning of yesterday’s Horizon IT inquiry proceeding­s, said Ms Vennells had contacted her four times in 2020 and 2021 – five years after Ms Sewell had left the company.

Ms Sewell said in her witness statement that she blocked Ms Vennells’ number because she “did not feel comfortabl­e with her contacting me”.

One of the emails from Ms Vennells said she needed to “plug some memory gaps” about Horizon and “Project Sparrow” – a sub-committee which sought to get rid of forensic accountant­s who found bugs in the faulty system.

Her statement read: “To the best of my knowledge and research, Paula Vennells contacted me four times in 2020 and 2021 via either email, telephone call or text message. It has taken me some time to locate all of these communicat­ions.

“On March 8, 2020, Paula Vennells emailed my personal email account from a personal email account of hers.

“In that email, she asked if I could spare her some time for a call as she had ‘been asked at short notice to appear before a... Select Committee on all things Horizon/sparrow and need to plug some memory gaps! My hope is this might help avoid an independen­t inquiry but to do so, I need to be well prepared’.

“I had not spoken to Paula since I had left the Post Office in 2015.”

Ms Sewell added: “Paula contacted me on four occasions in total. I recall blocking her number after the last call as I did not feel comfortabl­e with her contacting me.”

The Post Office has come under fire over the Horizon IT scandal.

More than 700 sub-postmaster­s were prosecuted by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.

Hundreds of sub-postmaster­s are still awaiting full compensati­on after having conviction­s quashed.