Man who headed up Post Office during scandal period is now MK College governor - and full of remorse

The man who was in charge of the Post Office nationally during the time of the wrongful prosecutions scandal has spoken exclusively to the MK Citizen from his home in Milton Keynes.

Alan Cook CBE is now retired and lives quietly in a large detached house in the city while serving as a governor of Milton Keynes College.

He was managing director of the Post Office between 2006 and 2010, during which period more than 160 sub-postmasters were prosecuted using faulty data from the Horizon system.

He told the Citizen this week he has asked himself a thousand times if there was anything he could have done to help avert the wrongful prosecutions that have damaged the lives of so many sub-postmasters.

“My heart goes out to the people who I regarded as valued work colleagues who’ve suffered so much. For nearly all of the time I was managing director, I had no idea there was a problem," he said.

Mr Cook said he used go out every Friday to visit five or six branches of the Post Office to meet the people working there, precisely to see what was working well and what wasn’t.

“None of them ever raised with me that there were problems with the Horizon system until very shortly before I left the business. I sincerely wish that they had.”

It is now known that faults with the Horizon IT system, designed by Fujitsu, were to blame for shortfalls in individual Post Office’s accounts, leading to the prosecution of the sub-postmasters.

“A big part of my job was finding and fixing problems,” said Mr Cook, who was answerable to former Chief Executive Adam Crozier at the time.

“I trusted the people responsible for launching prosecutions to do their jobs, and none of them ever suggested to me that we might be going after people who didn’t deserve it,” he said.

“I don’t think I will ever forgive myself for not knowing what was actually happening.”

He has now submitted written evidence to the public inquiry into the Post Office scandal.

“If Sir Wyn Williams, who is in charge of the inquiry, wants me to go to give evidence in person I would of course be very happy to attend. I would do anything I could to help the people affected get justice and to make sure nothing like this could ever happen again.”

The Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, the focus of the recent ITV drama which has brought the affair back into the headlines, was founded late in 2009, at roughly the same time as Mr Cook handed in his resignation to the Post Office, before leaving in January 2010 to take on a series of non-executive director roles.

“It was just too late for me to be able to look into their concerns and maybe be able to do something about them. They’ve done a wonderful job in sticking to their cause and making sure their mistreatment wasn’t forgotten, and I think we all owe them a debt of thanks for that.”