Ex Post Office boss quits new roles after miscarriage of justice
Paula Vennells has left her jobs with Morrisons and Dunelm
File photo dated 23/04/21 of former post office workers celebrating outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, after their convictions were overturned by the Court of Appeal. Neil Hudgell, who represented 29 of the cleared subpostmasters, has told BBC Breakfast on Saturday they will seek compensation over the Horizon scandal. Issue date: Saturday April 24, 2021.
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FORMER Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells has quit as a non-executive director of high street chains Morrisons and Dunelm in the wake of the subpostmaster miscarriage of justice scandal. In brief updates to the London Stock Exchange, both companies said she would be leaving the roles, which include responsibilities for setting executive pay and upholding corporate responsibility. She took home £89,000 in fees from Morrisons and £30,000 from Dunelm in the past year, according to the latest published annual accounts. Andrew Higginson, Morrisons chairman, said: Paula has been an insightful, effective and hardworking non-executive director, and, on behalf of the board, I want to thank her for her significant contribution over the last five years.
Ordained priest Paula Vennells was last seen at her multi-million pound home in Bedfordshire last Friday
She made £4.5million in seven years, got a CBE and had boardroom jobs with Dunelm and Morrisons
Mrs Vennells has now quit all her public roles, including with the Church of England after the scandal
Calls for her to be investigated as 39 postmasters wrongly convicted of stealing amid flaws of IT system
Ex Post Office boss quits over scandal that saw Bransholme subpostmaster wrongly jailed
39 subpostmasters convictions were overturned in total
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Former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells has quit her role as a non-executive director of Morrisons and Dunelm just days after the convictions of 39 subpostmasters were overturned.
Ex-Post Office chief Paula Vennells quits retailer boardroom roles after sub-postmasters have convictions overturned
It comes after 39 sub-postmasters had their wrongful convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting
overturned on Friday by the Court of Appeal.
Ms Vennells was chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019 when reports of a faulty IT system called Horizon were not properly investigated.
That led to a vast miscarriage of justice in which hundreds of postmasters, many of whom have already won a civil case against the Post Office, were prosecuted.
On Monday, supermarket chain Morrisons and homeware retailer Dunelm confirmed, as
first reported by Sky News, that Ms Vennells was to depart as a director of their boards with immediate effect.