The government has today (March 19) announced a new "enhanced" compensation scheme for families of those affected by the Post Office scandal.
The scheme is called the Horizon Family Members Redress Scheme, and it is, according to the government “expected to open in summer 2026”.
Over the coming months, the government will finalise guidance and publish further details on how to apply.
The claimants will be offered flat-rate “recognition payments” to people who claim through this route.
This scheme follows the Government’s acceptance of recommendation 18 in Volume 1 of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry report (that financial redress should be provided to close family members of those most adversely impacted by the Horizon scandal), and of similar recommendations made by the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board.
Blair McDougall, Minister for Small Business and Economic Transformation, stated today, "Over the past months, my officials and I have been working with stakeholders, including the Lost Chances group, Horizon redress claimants’ lawyers and the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, to develop a fair approach to redress which recognises the difficulties that some people may find in providing evidence of the harm which they have suffered.
"In doing so, we have drawn on lessons from other government schemes to ensure that this scheme delivers timely, accessible support, whilst minimising the potentially re-traumatising impact of a lengthy claim process.
"The outline scheme announced by my predecessor focussed on personal injury – which in many cases we expect to mean damage to mental health. That earlier version of the scheme would only have allowed applications to be made based on contemporaneous evidence of medical issues or a fresh assessment of an ongoing medical condition arising from Horizon.
"Stakeholders have told us that very few people would be able to provide this type of evidence. In response, we have created an alternative route to redress for people whose postmaster relatives faced some of the most stressful specific consequences of the Horizon scandal (such as prosecution or bankruptcy) and were therefore more likely to have experienced significant harm.
"So long as we can confirm the event experienced by the claimant’s postmaster relative, we will not require them to evidence any further harm."
To be eligible for the scheme, claimants must demonstrate that they were the partner, spouse, child, parent, or sibling of the affected postmaster, and that they were living with the postmaster at the time the postmaster was affected by Horizon.
Each claimant will undergo an initial eligibility review before the substance of their claim is assessed. To ensure the process is fair and accessible, the scheme will provide two distinct routes for applicants seeking redress:
- a route based on individual assessment of personal injury as outlined in the original announcement
- a route based on events which are likely to have caused significant harm to family members
Applicants with both event-based and individually-assessed claims will have to choose an award from one route or the other, not both.
Under the event-based route, eligible applicants may apply for a flat recognition payment based on events experienced within their family which may have caused them harm. The relevant events we plan to use for this route are the postmaster’s:
- bankruptcy
- prosecution (whether or not leading to conviction or imprisonment)
- wrongful death