Post Office Scandal: Bosses still made millions despite Horizon Scandal

How much were the people running the post office paid while the flawed Horizon system was in place?

The BBC looked at the company accounts of the Post Office and Royal Mail and came up with a figure of £19.4 million over 24 years.

Before 2012, Royal Mail and the Post Office were part of the same organization, and three previous chief executives – John Roberts, Adam Crozier and Dame Moya Green – earned a combined £12.8m. All three are scheduled to attend Horizon Inquiry when it reopens on April 9th.

Since 2012, the chief executive of the separated Post Office, Paula Vennells and then Nick Reid, have earned a total of £6.5m.

This is an average annual salary of less than £1 million, compared with an average annual salary of £3.91 million in 2022 for the heads of the UK's 100 largest listed companies.

This is a huge amount compared to the average worker's salary and the salaries of postmasters and below, who are still waiting for compensation.

The Postal Service argues that it is a very large and complex company, that it must compete with other organizations for talent, and that it uses outside consultants to advise on executive pay. So who are the post office bosses and what do they each earn?

Mr Reid, a former Dragoon captain and chief executive of NISA Retail, joined the company in September 2019, just months after 550 Deputy Postmaster Generals won a dramatic victory in the High Court.

He agreed to a much higher base salary than his predecessor, Mr Vennells, at £415,000 a year compared to her £255,000.

However, he has little room for bonuses, which are around £500,000 below the maximum he could have earned due to the pandemic, the Horizon investigation and the financial performance of the business.

As a result, their average income was slightly less than Mr. Vennels'.

For the 2022/23 season, he received a £137,000 bonus of the maximum £383,210 he had hoped to earn.

Mr Vennels became the Post Office's managing director in 2010 and remained in the top role until April 2019. During this period, more than 100 subpostmasters were indicted, conciliation schemes failed, and trials of subpostmasters reached a climax. Victory in the High Court.

A former part-time Anglican minister, she became one of the most famous faces of the scandal, featuring prominently in the ITV drama Mr Bates v Post Office.

Mr Vennells earned £5.1 million during his time as Post Office commander, peaking at £718,300 in 2018. He earned a basic salary of £253,800 that year, with a bonus (plus pension and other benefits) of £390,800.

Ms Vennels released the following statement through her lawyer: “I truly regret the suffering caused to the subpostmaster and his family, and to all those whose lives have been torn apart by the wrongful prosecution. We will fully support you and do our best to cooperate with the investigation. ”

Crozier became Royal Mail's chief executive in 2003 after serving as president of the Football Association and advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

His high salary regularly attracted headlines. In 2007-2008 he earned £3m in salary and bonuses, angering trade unions who protested the closure of thousands of post offices.

During his time at Royal Mail, he earned a total of £9.7 million in salary and bonuses and received a pension worth £1.1 million in 2008. Between 2003 and 2009, the Post Office used Horizon to secure over 400 convictions in England and Wales. According to evidence released to the investigation team, data.

At the time, the Post Office was part of Royal Mail, but had a separate board of directors and Mr Crozier was not part of it. In a statement, he said: “While I was not involved in any of the Horizon issues during my time at Royal Mail, I deeply sympathize with the people whose lives have been ruined by this incident.”

He left abruptly in 2010 to become chief executive of ITV.

Canadian Dame Moya took over in July 2010 and made a total of £1.88m before Royal Mail officially separated from the Post Office.

Mr Smith briefly served as managing director of the Post Office under Mr Vennels from April to October 2010 before moving to Royal Mail's chief customer officer position. He was the one who hailed the conviction of Surrey postmistress Seema Misra, who was wrongly imprisoned while pregnant, as “great news”, according to evidence presented at the Horizon inquiry. In 2010-11 he was paid £636,000.

Mr Cook served as managing director of the Post Office from 2006 to 2010. He earned a total of £3 million during that time, including £1.2 million in his final year. He said he would “never forgive” himself for not knowing that hundreds of people were being prosecuted while he was in charge, according to the Milton Keynes Citizen newspaper. He said he didn't know there were problems at Horizon until just before he left.

In 2010, a number of Royal Mail executives, including Mr Cook, were offered a long-term bonus scheme. That year, the Post Office convicted 58 people in England and Wales.

Mr Mills, a former HSBC banker, founded the pioneering telephone bank First Direct and joined the Post Office in 2002 as chief executive.

He earned a total of £1.3 million in salary and bonuses over four years, reaching a peak of £816,000 in 2006 when he retired, including £486,000 in compensation for losing his job. Ta.

Mr Roberts spent his entire career at the Post Office, including six years as chief executive, a period he described as a “roller coaster ride”.

His tenure saw the disastrous launch of Horizon and its short-lived rebranding to 'Consignia'.

From 1999 until his retirement in 2002 he earned £1.2 million. Last year he earned £225,852 including benefits (plus a pension on his final salary). Both he and his finance director, Jerry Cope, agreed to forgo raises for 2001-2002, citing the “risky state” of the business. The following year he earned £503,000, which included a salary in lieu of notice of £119,000.

John Roberts declined to comment. Alan Cooke, Dame Moya Green and David Smith did not respond to requests for comment from the BBC.