Jailed Shropshire post office workers set to get convictions overturned

Rubbina Shaheen, 55, from Worthen, near Shrewsbury, and Tracy Felstead, 38, from Telford, have been told the Post Office will offer no evidence when their cases goes to appeal, meaning their convictions will almost certainly be overturned.

The Post Office has apologised for its role in the matter.

Mrs Shaheen, who kept Greenfields Post Office in Shrewsbury, was jailed for 12 months in 2010 over an alleged £40,000 shortfall in the accounts.

She insisted the problem had been caused by a glitch with the Post Office computer database, and it later emerged that hundreds more postmasters across the country were experiencing similar problems.

Mrs Shaheen, who has not been able to find work since her imprisonment, said she was now hopeful she would be able to get a job. She said her conviction had caused her many health problems, including kidney failure which meant she now needed regular dialysis.

Miss Felstead, who was an 18-year-old counter assistant at the time of her arrest, was sentenced to six months in prison in 2001 for allegedly stealing £11,500.

She said she was delighted by the news, but that it would not make up for the impact it had on most of her adult life.

"I'm ecstatic, words can't describe how I feel, once that conviction is gone it means I won't have to justify why I have that," she said. "But I feel a lot of anger towards the justice system."

Earlier this year, the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred 47 convictions to the Court of Appeal, including those of Mrs Shaheen and Miss Felstead. The Post Office has revealed it will only contest three of the cases.

Miss Felstead was one of 555 former post office workers who were awarded £57.75 million in an out-of-court settlement, following group legal action in the High Court, although it later emerged that most of this money will go on legal fees.

At the end of the High Court hearing, Mr Justice Fraser concluded that the Post Office's Horizon computer system contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and that there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.

Post Office chairman Tim Parker apologised for the company's role in the wrongful convictions, and said it would be seeking to ensure they were compensates as quickly as possible.

“I am sincerely sorry on behalf of the Post Office for historical failings which seriously affected some postmasters," he said.

"Post Office is resetting its relationship with postmasters with reforms that prevent such past events ever happening again."

He added that the Post Office had appointed a team of independent criminal law specialists to investigate the safety of any other previous prosecutions. This, he said, covered the Post Office's conduct in prosecuting cases between 1999 and 2013, and examining its knowledge of, and attitude towards the reliability of the Horizon system.