Former Subpostmaster Lee Bowerman has announced his intention to “pursue legal action” over the financial compensation offer he has received through the Capture Redress Scheme. Writing to the Department of Business, Bowerman said it “follows my complete loss of confidence in the fairness, transparency and integrity of the assessment process and a scheme which is not fit for purpose.”

The Capture system was a precursor to Horizon which compiled Subpostmaster accounts on a standalone desktop computer. It was supplied by the Post Office and contained software coding errors which miscalculated Subpostmaster accounts. According to a review by the company Kroll, Post Office auditors and investigators relied on the data Capture produced when it came to suspected accounting offences and subsequent enforcement.

Bowerman, who ran Ebbw Vale Post Office in South Wales in the 1990s, wasn’t just an applicant to the scheme. He was “actively involved as a stakeholder in helping shape its design”, meeting with officials from the Business Department on ten separate occasions.

“Throughout that process”, says Bowerman, “I acted in good faith, believing that the Government was genuinely committed to delivering fair redress to those whose lives and businesses had been devastated by failures of the Capture system.”

Having been through the scheme, the 67 year old Bowerman has had a “complete loss of confidence in the fairness transparency and integrity of the assessment process and a scheme which is not fit for purpose.”

Detailed Claim

Bowerman says: “When submitting my claim, I provided substantial evidence in support of my case. This included a professionally prepared financial report which I personally had to fund at significant cost, together with a detailed 40-page personal impact statement. These documents set out the chronology of events and demonstrated how the failures of the Capture system resulted in escalating financial losses, severe personal distress and ultimately the forced sale of my Post Office, retail and rental accommodation business after only four years, I was 32 years old with a young family and I sought long term security and financial stability.

“This was not a business that I had intended to sell. On the contrary, I had invested significantly in developing bespoke purpose-built premises with the intention of operating the business for the long term. The sale was made under financial and personal pressure directly arising from the consequences of the Capture system.”

Bowerman says he submitted “substantial” evidence to support his claim, but this was dismissed by the scheme’s assessment panel who told him: “The Panel did not accept that, on a balance of probabilities, the problems with the
Capture system were the effective cause of you selling the business or of your subsequent difficulties with employment, though it accepted that Capture made some contributory contribution to those problems.”

Irrational Decision Making

Bowerman calls this “irrational” given the panel acknowledged the Capture system contributed to my
circumstances, yet dismisses the overwhelming documentary and financial evidenc”e demonstrating that those circumstances directly resulted in the loss of my business and the profound consequences that followed. The reasoning provided neither adequately addresses the evidence submitted nor explains why independent professional financial
analysis has effectively been disregarded.”

Bowerman has discussed the situation with other applicants to the scheme and the way he has been treated “appears consistent with what is emerging from other applicants’ outcomes, that they were handled within extremely narrow parameters. If that is correct then claimants are effectively being placed in an impossible position. The very issues
that most urgently require challenge are not factual mistakes in a narrow sense, nor are they always matters of new evidence. There are issues concerning how the Scheme has been applied in practice: the impact of evidential limitations, the minimisation of consequential loss, the treatment of long-term financial loss, the absence of a real
parity mechanism, and the general undervaluation of accepted harm.”

Not Fair

When attempting to appeal the decision, Bowerman felt like he and other claimants have been snookered by design: “The Scheme appears to define the limits of compensation in a restrictive way at initial assessment stage, and then provides an appeal process that is too narrow to challenge those restrictions. In those circumstances, claimants are effectively being set up to fail. Matters that have already been minimised in the initial offer, including issues such as consequential loss, evidential limitations and the treatment of historic financial loss, are not somehow going to be corrected or “magically” appear at appeal level if the appeal mechanism does not permit substantive reconsideration of
how those issues were handled in the first place. If the process excludes meaningful challenge to the very constraints embedded in the original decision, then it offers no real opportunity for justice. That is not acceptable. It is not fair. And it is not what any reasonable person would understand by a redress scheme intended to compensate innocent people whose lives and livelihoods have been devastated.”

Furthermore, challenging an offer is difficult when the assessment panel won’t explain how they came to their conclusion. “There is no explanation of how the figure offered was calculated”, writes Bowerman. “There is no identifiable mathematical or evidential route from the losses demonstrated to the compensation awarded. Therefore the claimant cannot determine whether relevant heads of loss have been accepted, reduced or excluded.”

Although Bowerman says he now believes legal action against the government is now the “only realistic avenue available to seek justice”, he remains willing to “resolve this matter fairly and constructively. However, I cannot accept a decision that I believe fails to reflect either the evidence submitted or the purpose for which the scheme was
established.”

Bowerman said: “I hope that this matter will receive the scrutiny it deserves, not only because of its importance to my own case but because of the wider implications for every claimant who has placed their trust in the Capture Redress Scheme.”

I have asked the government for comment.

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