POST WASTE
January sales
POST OFFICE results for 2023/24, published just before Christmas, make for grimly fascinating reading for students of corporate mismanagement.
The scandal in which sub-postmasters were prosecuted, sacked, bankrupted or otherwise victimised set the taxpayer-owned company back around £740m in that year alone, largely thanks to a hike in the expected costs of the Horizon Shortfall Scheme (for most non-convicted victims) after the government was belatedly forced to improve it. Inevitably, further costs will follow. Not least because of the £82m costs in the year of dealing with the inquiry that concluded publicly last month, much of which went to lawyers from Burges Salmon, Fieldfisher, Herbert Smith Freehills and Peters & Peters. Total costs up to last March top £150m.