Post Office boss to step down from role next year
· BBC NewsLucy Hooker & Michael Race
Business reporters, BBC News
Post Office boss Nick Read will step down from his role next year, the company has said.
The chief executive had already stepped back from front-line duties saying he wanted to give his "entire attention" to the final stage of the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal.
The inquiry is scrutinising failings over the wrongful prosecutions of hundreds of sub-postmasters based on faulty accounting software which made it look as though money was missing from branches.
On Wednesday, the Post Office said Mr Read would depart in March 2025.
Mr Read described it as a "great privilege" to have worked as Post Office chief executive in an "extraordinarily challenging time for the business and for postmasters".
"There remains much to be done for this great UK institution but the journey to reset the relationship with postmasters is well under way and our work to support justice and redress for postmasters will continue," he added.
Mr Read joined the company in 2019, long after the prosecutions sub-postmasters had finished, and has not yet appeared before the inquiry.
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry began in 2022 and has heard evidence from scores of victims as well as some executives who worked at the Post Office when the prosecutions were taking place between 1999 and 2015.
Sir Alan Bates, who led the campaign on behalf of the wrongly prosecuted sub-postmasters, said he was not surprised by Mr Read's departure.
"When I knew he'd taken seven weeks' leave - in theory to prepare for the inquiry - I thought he'd taken seven weeks off to find a new job," he said.
Liam Byrne, chair of parliament's Business Committee, said Mr Read had made "the right decision" for himself and the Post Office in standing down.
Speaking to the BBC, he said the Post Office now needed to "move on".
He said Mr Read had been dealing with "a lot of legacies from the past but frankly at times there have been questions about how tightly things have been gripped".
"Innocent victims" had paid the price he said.
'He hasn't achieved anything'
Mr Read's predecessor, Paula Vennells, came in for excoriating criticism in the media and at the inquiry, for her role running the publicly-owned firm between 2012 and 2019.
When he took over Mr Read faced a mammoth task to turn around the loss-making Post Office at a time when the organisation was facing a crisis of faith as the scale of the Horizon scandal came to light.
Mr Read stepped back from his role in July to prepare to appear before the inquiry which is due to reconvene later this month.
Representatives for the sub-postmasters have raised concerns over why justice and compensation have taken so long to be delivered.
"He really hasn't achieved anything, has he?" said Sir Alan. "He certainly hasn't done anything for the victims in all of this."
Sir Alan called for Mr Read's successor to come in "with a big sweeping brush and clear the whole thing out".
The inquiry is likely to challenge Mr Read on what lessons have been learned and applied at the Post Office, under his tenure.
He has already blotted his copybook with the inquiry's chair Sir Wyn Williams over a £450,000 bonus he was due to receive. The bonus was in part for meeting performance targets that included fully cooperating with the public inquiry.
Sir Wyn issued a rebuke, saying the payment could not be justified, as the inquiry was still in its first phase.
Mr Read returned a portion of the bonus.
There was another undignified squabble around Mr Read's pay packet earlier this year.
Former chair of the post office, Henry Staunton, claimed that Mr Read had been unhappy with his pay, which amounted to £573,000, including bonuses in 2022-23.
His claim was backed by a former HR director who claimed Mr Read had repeatedly threatened to resign unless he was given a pay rise above 5%. He denied the claim and a subsequent unpublished report cleared him of all misconduct allegations.