Charlie Pye

DENIS O'DONNELL HAS SENT AN OPEN LETTER ASKING FOR A MORATORIUM ON THE POST OFFICE DEADLINE If you are reading this, please consider sharing it. This is how we actually help the victims of the Post Office scandal. Only if enough of us make noise does anyone at the top have to listen. This is a state owned company, and this is what it did to its own postmasters and postmistresses. Time is short. Let's help them. Denis O'Donnell spent 6 years fighting @PostOffice privately over a till defect he discovered in 2019. Recently he took it public and formal, an open letter to Lord James Arbuthnot, copied to Post Office chair Nigel Railton and Chief Technology Officer Paul Anastassi. I'm publishing it here in full in his own words: ===== To: Lord James Arbuthnot, c.c Niel Railton P.O.L. Chair, C.T.O. Paul Anastassi. Sir, I am a former subpostmaster of forty years experience, I hold hope for generations of similar individuals past present and future. In 2019, fully seven years ago, I discovered what Ron Warmington @RonRwarming later termed the Horizon part cash platform defect. I have pursued this matter for all that time, even to the disregard of my own brother's life. I ask one thing from each of you. An agreement that the wrongs of the past may finally be underlined with truth and honour. As you may be aware I have proven this issue twice beyond doubt, once to Nick Read in 2021 and secondly, together with yourselves and aided by Karl Flinders @Karlfl and Ron Warmington, to the Post Office executive. It must be apparent to all that with today's technological enablements, lip service is no longer enough to disguise real issues, no matter how painful these may be, from the public. Therefore can we seize this opportunity to be leaders in a new future where real candour can be displayed. In December 2025 myself and Ron asked for three measures to improve information in relation to the aforementioned defect. First, all serving staff to be made aware of the potential for error. This was achieved by internal communication, but in my experience of day to day life on the counter, that needs to be enforced with regular reminders or automatic alerts. Second, a fix for the problem. As the defect was written into the basic code after the settlement screen, this may not be remedied until the new system is established. Third, it was deemed an important matter that all legacy staff, or their survivors, should be made aware that this could potentially have caused losses they or their predecessors were convicted of or scandalised by. This final important condition has not fully been met. The part cash defect was never alluded to within the examples shown in the Process Review redress application form, or in the information furnished. I have been almost alone in proclaiming this matter, with the exception of those writers on LinkedIn who understood this problem following my initial contacts. I now ask humbly, on behalf of those wronged in this way by a system defect which would have provided them no clues whatsoever to any discrepancies, that a moratorium be announced until the end of this year, in order that those people may be fully alerted. I believe this is an opportunity to reinvigorate the love for the Post Office which many have known, but which sadly has now become, for many, a distant memory of what it can be. Denis O'Donnell, Meliden, former Subpostmaster. ====== That is a man who has spent 7 years proving he was right, asking not for revenge but for a few extra months so the people this actually happened to can find out before the door closes for good. The Process Review closes to new applications at 11.59pm on 30 September 2026. Denis is asking for that to become 31 December. If you were ever a subpostmaster, or you know one, read this and share it while there is still time for it to matter.