Graham Livesey had been proud to run Staveley’s post office. His shop, The Beehive, is an important part of life in the Cumbrian village and he believes around 300 villagers have been paperboys and girls for him.
But he is shutting down the post office section of his shop in disgust at the actions of its leadership and investigators during the Horizon IT scandal, and the toll it took on him.
Livesey says he paid the Post Office around £5,000 to make up imaginary shortfalls created by the computer system, which also ruined relationships with some staff and destroyed the health of his Dutch partner, Fokel .
About six or seven months after taking on the post office in 2009, Livesey experienced his first unexplained shortfall.
“From day one we had virtually balanced to the penny,” he said. “Then it was the last day of a trading period and I finalised. Suddenly, boom – £250. The previous day we were 6p over.” They counted the money again, checked the tills, looked for places where cash might have fallen.
Like other subpostmasters, Livesey resigned himself to paying £250 out of his own pocket. “That day, I decided that only I would work [behind the counter]. So I knew at the end of the day, it was perfect. We cashed up and bang – the figure is exactly £250 short. Two days on the trot.”
His experience calling the helpline was the same as that of all the other subpostmasters depicted in the ITV drama. “Standard parrot speech. Must be a branch error. And that’s as far as their investigation went.”
The further shortfalls that emerged over the next five years chipped away at trust between the people who worked there. If it wasn’t the Horizon system, that meant that someone was either making errors or had been stealing money.
“You’d think, well, maybe it’s a new member of staff, or someone about to leave. Someone would walk out disillusioned, thinking that the finger was on them. And then you’re short-staffed which puts more pressure on you – and I’m in quite a rural area so my catchment for new recruits is quite small.”
Fokel was often running things when the shortfalls happened, and blamed herself. She began drinking heavily and eventually refused to work in the post office section of the shop. She died of cancer in 2021.
The shortfalls ended in 2015, when Horizon was upgraded a third time, Livesey said, and he was eventually compensated by the Post Office for £8,500 for the problems it caused for him.
He stayed up until 2am watching the ITV series in one go. “I was bawling my eyes out at some parts. And smoke was coming out of my ears at others. After I watched it, I didn’t want to open. I thought ‘how am I going to physically get downstairs and then greet customers with a smile on my face?’”
“My only regrets about resigning is the fact that people are going to have to travel towards Kendal or Windermere [to go to the post office].
“But at the end of the day, I’ve got to live with my conscience. I can’t be in league with the devil.”
So far around 2,700 postmasters have received offers of compensation totalling £138million from the Post Office.
