The Post Office scandal ignited in a little village once famous for its contribution to the computer industry. Fenny Compton, a village and civil parish in Warwickshire, was once home to computer pioneers Andrew and Kathleen Booth, who built a prototype PC named the All-Purpose Electronic Computer (APEC) in a local barn.
Their accomplishment brought the town some popularity in the 1940s and 50s, but the community has now entered a new chapter in its history.
The village of 800 spawned the group now fighting for justice for a group of Post Office sub-postmasters found to be victims of what observers have described as the most significant miscarriage of justice in British legal history.
Locals have told how Fenny Compton played its “own little part” in the lives of several dozen wrongfully prosecuted postal workers.
Fenny Compton’s village hall was the meeting place of between 30 and 40 former sub-postmasters and mistresses impacted by the 2009 Horizon IT scandal.
When they met one Sunday nearly 15 years ago, many were unaware they were one of many people impacted by software that made it appear money was missing from Post Office accounts.
The organisation prosecuted 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses between 1999 and 2015 based on information from the Horizon system – originally designed to improve productivity – which officials had repeatedly warned was faulty.
People prosecuted and convicted due to the errors had their lives ruined, leaving them with criminal records, broken marriages, addictions and alleged premature deaths.
Alan Bates founded the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) at that 2009 meeting, providing a lifeline for those former employees who had suffered so significantly.
The JFSA’s tireless campaigning has seen 93 convictions overturned and spawned an inquiry, but the group’s work is far from over.
He and many other workers have long maintained their innocence and claimed they had repeatedly raised the alarm over errors made by the accounting software.
Fenny Compton town hall was the place where the group “realised that they weren’t single entities”, village hall trustee Keith Hicks told the BBC.
Kate Carless, the village hall treasurer, said the Fenny Compton played a “little part in that history”, and, while it wasn’t used during filming Mr Bates vs the Post Office – the ITV drama that reignited the movement to quash remaining convictions – the building is more popular than ever.
Ms Carless said she is now the hall’s “agent”, and the show has led “both the residents and other people” to get in touch.
