Former users of a pre-Horizon Post Office accounting system, who suffered as a result of its errors, are being invited to tell their stories to the government as it attempts to ascertain common themes that will help in the design of its compensation scheme.

The government has recognised that problems with the Post Office’s Capture software caused discrepancies and said it will offer financial redress and review criminal prosecutions.

The first invitations – to people who suffered financial losses and criminal convictions – were sent out by Hudgell Solicitors, which represents about 80 former Capture users.

The case studies will help establish “key themes which will help shape how the compensation scheme will look”, according to Hudgells.

The Capture software was used before the controversial Horizon system at the centre of the Post Office scandal, but unknown to the subpostmasters using it, errors in the software were causing the account shortfalls they were blamed and published for.

Since the Horizon problems became mainstream news in January last year, after 15 years on the fringes of public debate, former subpostmasters who had experienced similar problems with Capture came forward with their stories.

After former MP and now peer Kevan Jones highlighted their problems, things escalated quickly as the government didn’t want to be seen to be ignoring the issue – as it did with Horizon for two decades.

A forensic investigation commissioned in May 2024 found a “reasonable likelihood” that the Post Office Capture software caused accounting losses, and in December, the government officially recognised that Capture users experienced shortfalls caused by errors in the system.

Jones said it was agreed with the government that Hudgells would bring forward about a dozen cases with a variety of experiences to help develop a redress scheme. “We do not have to reinvent the wheel, but there are some aspects of Capture which are different to Horizon,” he said.

Jones said there was also a lack of information due to the length of time that has passed since the subpostmasters had problems with Capture.

Former subpostmaster and Capture user Steve Marston has been invited to take part. “I am more than happy to take part and I am glad to see things are moving quickly. The sooner this is sorted out, the sooner we can come out the other end,” he said.

Marston, who was a subpostmaster in Bury, Lancashire, was prosecuted in 1996 for theft and false accounting following an unexplained shortfall of nearly £80,000. He said he had never had any problems using the paper-based accounting system, but that changed when his branch, which he ran from 1973, began using the Capture system.

“We were pushed into using it by the Post Office in 1996,” he told Computer Weekly last year. He added that he felt pressured into using the system at a time when many branches were being closed by the Post Office.

“It was a choice of moving to this system or remaining with the manual system and risk closure. I had no problems for 20 years using manual accounting processes, but within two years of using Capture, I ran up a debt of £79,000,” said Marston.

After an audit revealed a loss that he couldn’t fully cover out of his own pocket, Marston was advised to plead guilty to theft and fraud to avoid jail. The judge took into account two bravery awards Marston had received for standing up to armed robbers, saving him a jail sentence. He received a 12-month suspended sentence, lost his home and business, and went bankrupt.

An estimated 2,000 branches used Capture, but the extent of problems is difficult to ascertain because many used it over 30 years ago. As a consequence, information is scarce and some users have passed away.

Under extreme public scrutiny, the government and the Post Office acted quickly to listen to Capture users, in contrast with the Horizon problems, which took almost 20 years and hundreds of millions of pounds before the Post Office and government acknowledged there was a problem. 

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “Last month, we officially recognised Capture could have created shortfalls affecting postmasters. That’s why we are working with postmasters who suffered losses as a result of Capture to gather information to help design a redress process.”

The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which started reviewing subpostmaster convictions that were based on evidence from the flawed Horizon system in 2015, is now looking into Capture-based prosecutions. It took until 2021 for the first Horizon-based convictions to be overturned in Southwark Crown Court and the Court of Appeal.

Horizon and Capture are poles apart in terms of technology. Capture was software, available in the early 1990s, that subpostmasters could buy and download onto a PC to do their accounts. Horizon is a major enterprise system that connects to Post Office systems and is used in all branches, of which there are about 12,000.

But the treatment of subpostmasters who experienced unexplained shortfalls while using Capture had the same hallmarks. For example, data on Post Office prosecutions of subpostmasters revealed worrying similarities in the way it treated Horizon and Capture users who suffered unexplained losses.

Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered as a result of the Horizon system, and has investigated ever since.

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