The Post Office has revealed that, over a period of 24 years, the people at the helm of the company while the problematic Horizon system was in place earned a total of £19.4m. From 1995 to 2002, John Roberts was in charge of the Post Office (then called Consignia) and made £1.2m. From 2010 to 2019, Paula Vennells was the managing director of the company and earned a total of £5.1m. The current CEO, Nick Read, earned £415,000 a year when he joined the company in 2019, significantly higher than Vennells’ salary of £255,000.
According to reports, the average boss of the UK’s largest 100 companies earned £3.91m in 2022. Although the £6.5m the Post Office’s two most recent CEOs earned is significantly less than this figure, it remains a substantial amount compared to the salary of the average worker or sub-postmasters who are still waiting for compensation.
Post Office’s representatives have stated that theirs is a complex and large business that has to compete with other organisations for talent. External consultants are used to inform their decisions on executive pay. Interestingly, Roberts, Adam Crozier and Dame Moya Greene, during their combined tenures up to 2012 when Royal Mail and the Post Office were both part of the same organisation, earned a total of £12.8m.
Vennells, on the other hand, headed the company from 2010 to 2019 through a time period that saw more than 100 sub-postmasters being prosecuted by the Post Office. In April 2019, she was replaced by Read and faced a public backlash over her earnings from her tenure, especially after evidence emerged that several sub-postmasters were wrongly treated. From her time from 2010 to 2018, her salary peaked at £718,300
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