Second Put up Workplace Seize conviction referred to attraction court docket
The Prison Circumstances Evaluate Fee (CCRC) has referred a second subpostmaster attraction in opposition to a conviction based mostly on the Put up Workplace’s defective Seize system to the Court docket of Attraction.
A theft and false accounting conviction of a Put up Workplace Seize consumer from 1997 joins a theft conviction from 1998 within the Court docket of Attraction.
The newest referral is said to the prosecution of former subpostmaster Steve Marston, who was a subpostmaster in Bury, Lancashire. He was convicted in 1997, for theft and false accounting, following an unexplained shortfall of practically £80,000. He stated he had by no means had any issues utilizing the paper-based accounting system, however that modified when his department, which he ran from 1973, started utilizing the Seize system.
Marston was knowledgeable this morning (27 March) that his attraction could be referred to the attraction court docket. The CCRC was unavailable for remark when this text was printed.
In October 2025, an attraction in opposition to a 1998 conviction of Patricia Owen, who died in 2003, was the primary Seize case to be referred to the Court docket of Attraction. She pleaded not responsible to the theft of £6,000, however was convicted and sentenced to 6 months’ imprisonment, suspended for 2 years, at Canterbury Crown Court docket.
Marston advised Laptop Weekly: “It looks like a large weight has been lifted. We’ve been ready for practically 18 months to listen to this, and it’s been extraordinarily laborious on the household, in addition to myself.
“Clearly, it is a huge step ahead, however there’s nonetheless a hell of a protracted method to go but,” he added.
Extra ready
There are at present about 30 prosecutions beneath assessment by the CCRC. Not like convictions based mostly on the Horizon system, which had been overturned en masse via laws, these based mostly on Seize must undergo the CCRC.
The Put up Workplace stated it’s treating every attraction on a case-by-case foundation.
Seize, which predates Fujitsu’s Horizon system, was utilized in Put up Workplace branches within the Nineteen Nineties to interchange paper-based accounting. Like with the controversial Horizon system on the centre of the Put up Workplace scandal, which noticed subpostmasters blamed for unexplained losses, some Seize customers had been prosecuted for monetary crimes.
The controversy over Seize emerged in January 2024, after ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Put up Workplace advised the tales of subpostmasters who had suffered by the hands of the Horizon system.
In the identical month, Kevan Jones, an MP on the time who now sits within the Home of Lords, highlighted proof of injustices triggered by Seize losses.
This led to a marketing campaign and, by December 2024, the federal government promised monetary redress and justice for subpostmasters affected by Seize issues. This adopted an impartial investigation by forensic specialists at Kroll, which discovered there was a “cheap probability” the Put up Workplace Seize software program prompted accounting losses.
Marston has been a central determine within the marketing campaign for justice for former Seize customers.
Solicitor Neil Hudgell of Hudgell Solicitors, which represents many former Seize customers interesting convictions, stated he’s “delighted with the information”.
“Steve is a really respectable man, who deserves an early finish to this course of,” he stated. “We now wait to listen to how the Put up Workplace responds.”
Requires ‘pressing laws’
MPs lately referred to as for “pressing laws” to overturn Put up Workplace convictions based mostly on its Seize software program, and warned that “unsafe” convictions based mostly on different pre-Horizon programs are but to be unearthed.
In its newest report, the enterprise and commerce choose committee highlighted the potential that there are miscarriages of justice for subpostmasters nonetheless to be found, including that there may be proof the Ministry of Justice is “wrongly judging eligibility” of subpostmasters that might attraction in opposition to convictions.
Laptop Weekly first uncovered the scandal in 2009, revealing the tales of seven subpostmasters and the issues they suffered because of the Horizon system.
