The Post Office (PO) has vowed to pay compensation to subpostmasters who submitted an application after the required deadline over the Horizon IT scandal, following claims this week that it would not.

The comments come after the Guardian reported yesterday that at least170 branch managers had been told they may not be reapid money wrongly deducted from their wages.

Between 2000 and 2014, 736 subpostmasters were prosecuted by Post Office (PO) for theft, fraud and false accounting due to numbers not add­ing up on their till system, Horizon. However, a number of convictions were quashed after the shortfalls were linked to major IT glitches.

The Historic Shortfall Scheme was set up in 2020 after the Post Office admitted years of failings, but claimants only had three months to apply. The scheme was later extended for a further 15 weeks following pressure from campaigners.

A PO spokesperson said: “Compensation offers have bee made to almost two thirds of the 2,368 eligible applicants in the Historical Shortfall Scheme, with the majority of those already paid and we will make sure that full and fair redress is made for postmasters who have come forward since the scheme closed to new applicants.”