Board member spells out Post Office executive dysfunction

Saf Ismail, Post Office Non-Executive Director

The utter dysfunction of the Post Office as an organisation has been laid bare by one of its serving directors. Saf Ismail was one of two Subpostmasters (the other being Elliot Jacobs) appointed to the Post Office board in 2021.

Ismail appears to be a decent man, wholly unprepared for the mediocre, venal nature of the people he found himself dealing with once he joined the Post Office board. At the moment both he and his business (which runs seven branches and a banking hub) is currently under investigation by the Post Office for undisclosed reasons. He has therefore stepped back from being a board member whilst the investigation is ongoing. That was all the information disclosed by the Inquiry.

Ismail described the Post Office as “so bureaucratic, to get anything done just takes a very long time”. This would be unhelpful at the best of times, but right now, according to Ismail “there’s so many fires… within this organisation that need putting out.”

Recalling joining the board, Ismail told the Inquiry “The NEDs [Non-Executive Directors]… were welcoming and were hospitable, however the wider executive made it difficult… we didn’t feel as welcomed”.

Though welcoming, the NEDs don’t appear to know what they’re doing, or, as Ismail says in his witness statement:

“the board have a limited level of operational understanding required to challenge the executive, as board members do not have frontline Post Office experience and, as such, they do not fully appreciate the complexities and challenges PMs [Subpostmasters] face. The only individuals with any operational nous or understanding of PM economics are myself and Mr Jacobs.”

It is perhaps unsurprising that Post Office execs, rather than welcome Ismail and Jacobs’ operational understanding, saw their expertise as a threat. Ismail said that in early 2023 the Post Office’s Chief People Officer, Jane Davies told Ismail that the Post Office CEO Nick Read “was not happy with… postmasters being on the board because we were too awkward, too challenging and that he wanted that to be reversed”.

Mushroom Men

Ismail claims that he and Jacobs were deliberately kept in the dark by the board and executive about key decisions being made by the business.

“Up until recently,” he said, “we were not provided access to any of the other committee documents that we were not on…. when I spoke to the previous Chair, Henry [Staunton], and to Jane Davies, they particularly mentioned how the wider Executive ensured myself and Mr Jacobs were blocked out of meetings that involved talking about bonuses and salaries. We were actively excluded from their meetings.”

Ismail and Jacobs were keen to ensure a greater board-level understanding of the Subpostmasters’ concerns (which, in a way, is their job) and so proposed bringing forward the appointment of their successors and having an 18-month handover. This was rejected.

Tail wagging the dog

Ismail painted a picture of an executive team which felt empowered enough to ignore its own board, referring specifically to the appointments process:

“There’s been occasions when Board members have been invited to conduct interviews for very senior roles, highly paid senior roles within the organisation, and the Board members who are part of the panel, this is their skillset, they know what they are looking for. And when the interviews have been conducted, the Board members made it very, very clear that it should be candidate A, out of A, B, C, D, for example. However, the wider Executive has then totally ignored that advice, providing no reasoning whatsoever, and then gone and recruited candidate B.”

Ismail named the appointment of Chief Retail Officer, Martin Roberts, as a specific example of this. Roberts apparently later turned out to be, in Ismail’s view “not good enough”. Ismail also claimed the Executive chose what information they fed the board in order to get the decisions they wanted. He told the Inquiry this led to the board making bad decisions which cost the business money.

Julian Blake, who questioned Ismail on behalf of the Inquiry, asked if there were parts of the executive doing this repeatedly. Ismail said: “Yes, I feel procurement is particularly poor, legal is extremely poor”.

Julian Blake

Damningly, Ismail alleged that the key driver of actions and attitudes at the Post Office is its bonus culture. In his witness statement, Ismail wrote:

“senior leaders within POL [Post Office Ltd] are obsessed with their remuneration. I have seen an unhealthy and unjustified obsession with bonuses and remuneration within POL.”

Ismail said this led to decisions which harmed the business, writing:

“the previous POL Head of IT, Jeff Smyth, was due to receive a bonus linked to delivery of a programme to exit POL’s Belfast data centres. This programme was, in my view, a waste of public money approximately in the region of £35 million… the executive tried to deliver this project at any cost to release bonuses.”

If this is true, it’s borderline fraudulent.

The Untouchables

Most of the rest of the afternoon was taken up with a discussion about the Post Office’s habit of hanging on to its bad apples in the legal, retail and investigations team, or, worse, allowing them to leave the business, and then re-hiring them as contractors to work on historic Postmaster cases, much to the alarm of the Postmasters they’d screwed over.

Ismail said these people were described by Nick Read as “The Untouchables” because “there’s no accountability for them… they were untouchable because there’d been complaints, there’d been various points where, for example, on the legal team side, on the past roles side, it just wasn’t moving quick enough, and there was no performance management, no accountability.”

Earlier this year, in the light of comments made by the Post Office Director of Communications, Jacobs and Ismail sought a meeting with the then Post Office Chair, Henry Staunton. Jacobs had recently been placed under investigation by the Post Office and both men were angry. Staunton’s note of the meeting was shown to the Inquiry.

The Foat mentioned in the note is Ben Foat, the former Post Office General Counsel and head of the legal department, who has subsequently stood down from his role to prepare his evidence for this phase of the Inquiry.

There’s more…

The reference in the above note to “JB” is to John Bartlett, the current head of the Post Office investigations unit. Ismail told the Inquiry told the Inquiry that Project Phoenix was an internal investigation into the actions of various Post Office staff who behaved abominably during the scandal with a view to ensuring they couldn’t continue to damage Postmasters or the Post Office itself. Steve Bradshaw was a case in point. Bradshaw was the first person to give evidence to the Inquiry this year after the screening of the ITV drama Bates v Post Office. Dressed entirely in black, Bradshaw gave a disastrous performance, coming across like a small-minded bully.

Ismail told Blake:

“In terms of Steve Bradshaw, I did mention at at least two to three Board meetings, towards the back end of ’23 that the business needs to be prepared for what’s coming out and, again, [I was] ignored. And then once Steve Bradshaw gave testimony, the Board and the wider executive were “How is Steve still in the business? What’s going on? Why have we not dealt with this?” And that’s providing you some context in terms of where the long grass came from because we thought it should have been dealt with.”

Staunton circulated his note to Ismail and Jacobs and asked if it was correct and whether he could send it in confidence to Nick Read (who I’m told was sitting in the Inquiry watching Ismail give evidence). Ismail and Jacobs men agreed. Read forwarded the note to Steve Bradshaw and Martin Roberts.

Ismail continues to give evidence today, and will be followed by his Subpostmaster NED colleague, Elliot Jacobs.


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19 responses to “Board member spells out Post Office executive dysfunction”

  1. I’m sure you’ll get to it but Elliot’s testimony was a far more damning indictment of current policies and procedures. His account of the arrogance of the current investigations team was astounding.

  2. How do you change an organisation’s culture? Simply, you cannot!

    Culture includes deep-seated values, attitudes and beliefs ingrained over decades. Organisations will self-destruct before surrendering their biases, prejudices, warped beliefs and integrity voids.

    Amazon would be foolish to buy PO, even for £1.

  3. Edward Stephenson avatar

    Having just re-read the summary of Saf Ismail’s appearance at the enquiry, and having read through all the comments again, I am beginning to wonder whether the only long-term solution, to achieve a competent management structure in the POL head office, is for the owners/shareholders/government to put in place some sort of recruitment/promotion mechanism which ensures that SPMs themselves are given the opportunity to serve in all the senior roles in head office.

    Incidentally, I spent the last eight years of my career in EDP/ADP/IT (call it what you will) working for an American company, later bought out by HP, and the bonus culture was completely counter-productive to the achievement of constructive and productive effort aimed at maintaining and enhancing the automated system for the benefit of the customer.

  4. It would be normal at this point to say “I’m Shocked”. But this is the Post Office, they just carry on with their old ways. Subpostmaster (SPM) Representative Non Executive Director, Elliot Jacobs has just had a repeat of the “Thugs in Suits” (TIS) encounter.

    The scandal started with SPM’s being audited and visited by (IB, POID, SIS) Investigators and interviewed in police like conditions. Taped interviews. At the Police version of these you have the right to a solicitor. Not PO, you may have a “friend” present but they may not speak on behalf of the SPM.

    Previously, Mr Rudkin, representing SPM’s saw at Fujitsu HQ witnessed a back door into the Horizon accounts of SPM’s without their knowledge. As an SPM himself the TIS found a discrepancy! To shut Mr Rudkin up?

    Is it inconvenient for PO to have Jacobs serving a further term as SPM representative on the Board? Somehow there are discrepancies at his sub post offices. Seems Elliot needs to be put under pressure by PO. He has had a typical TIS interview.

    Nothing changes, intimidation as normal from PO Investigators. Thugs in Suits.

  5. The evidence from the 2 SPM NEDs was clear, concise, seemed to be well balanced, and courageous. One of the few things the PO did well was the shortlisting process for SPM NEDs that meant these 2 guys ended up on the Board. The content of the evidence was breathtaking; PO has learnt nothing from the past, the culture hasn’t changed, and SPMs continue to be treated as criminals who haven’t been found out yet. Nick Read should hang his head in shame; hope there’s no payoff linked to his resignation.

  6. I would like to know
    …..what this top little and top late is costing EVERY DAY
    …..why are all these ridiculously over paid executives are still in jobs
    …..especially those who have stated under oath ” they don’t remember”

    ……as a layman I believe this enquiry should have STARTED with THE CEO and
    And in a few days it would have been clear that ALL the management were economical with the truth
    ….These two directors should be reinstated and given power to sack almost everyone…including the boss who is no better than the outgoing vicar who lied to the tribunal and MUST GO TO PRISON

    1. Megan Macfarlane avatar
      Megan Macfarlane

      I understand where you’re coming from, but the inquiry knows exactly what they’re doing. They’re building up the evidence & then they can confront those most responsible. If they started with those people, without having built up walls of evidence first, they’d be able to wriggle out of responsibility.
      Unfortunately it takes time to do it properly.

  7. What an eloquent compassionate man. I agree with the others, Post Office would have done well to actually have someone of his calibre to run the Post Office. Not once (although I didn’t hear all his comments) did I hear “I can’t recall/remember”.

  8. From Mr Ismail’s evidence, it appears that the Post Office is still controlled by the legal team. However in all of this, the thing that confounds me, is even when members of the old Executive have gone, their replacements are continuing with exactly the same behaviours. Why?

  9. Ismail and Jacobs should be running the Post Office.

  10. It sounds as if virtually nothing has changed at POL. My heart sank as I read this piece because the themes were all so familiar.

    Why is the Government allowing this craziness to continue!!

    I don’t know if it is possible to do so, but this organisation needs of be shutdown, rebooted and run by clever, principled people who aren’t fixated on bonuses.

    1. yes as alan bates said sold off to amazon for a £1

  11. Yes. I was at yesterday’s session when Saf Ismail was answering questions. A very coherent, impressive and courageous man. He said he had at one point considered resigning as a result of the way he was treated. Lucky for sub postmasters AND the Post Office that he decided to persevere. It must, too, have been very difficult for Ismail to speak so honestly with Nick Read sitting just a few yards away from him.

    1. Agreed…..not easy…
      Read has been observing at many sittings…. knowing that flack is coming his way..

  12. A superb summary of today and literally words fail me…

    The level of corruption and incompetence with seniors on big compensation terms in staggering.

    As Crozier said the Govt said be generous on bonuses…

    Does one think that Staunton knew what was going but failed or was unable to act….?

  13. Great info but where is the accountability. What the hell was the government doing to allow this farce and such a waste of money paid to these cretins
    It’s not good enough for the PMs all of them to keep saying year after year the tax payer has to tighten its belt while they add the taxpayers money to these fat no obese cats.

  14. Never forget the victims.

  15. Mrs Ruth C Durrant avatar
    Mrs Ruth C Durrant

    What a great guy, patient, professional and articulate. He is no longer on the board? what a pity

  16. Saf Ismail is one of only a few good guys employed by the Post Office. His comments and views about Steve Bradshaw were spot on and justified as he was shown up to be the narrow minded bully he is at The Inquiry back in January.

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