Paula Vennells

Paula Vennells

British businesswoman and priest (born 1959)

Paula Anne Vennells (born 21 February 1959) is a British former businesswoman who was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Post Office Limited from 2012 to 2019. She is also an ordained Anglican priest who ceased her clerical duties in 2021.2

From Wikipedia’s article on Paula Vennells (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born Feb 21, 1959.1

About

Vennells was the CEO of Post Office Limited during the latter part of the British Post Office scandal, in which more than 900 subpostmasters were wrongly convicted between 1999 and 2015 of theft, false accounting or fraud, owing to apparent shortfalls at their Post Office branches that were caused by flaws in Horizon, an accounting software used by the Post Office. Many more subpostmasters paid the Post Office for alleged shortfalls or had their contracts terminated. The actions of the Post Office caused the loss of jobs, bankruptcy, family breakdown, criminal convictions, prison sentences and at least thirteen suicides. Under Vennells, the Post Office led a costly and unsuccessful attempt to defend a group action brought by subpostmasters.

In 2019 she became the chair of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, but left the role the following year. In 2021, after the convictions of 39 subpostmasters were quashed, she resigned from her non-executive directorships at the retailer Dunelm and the supermarket chain Morrisons. Vennells had been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019; the honour was revoked in 2024 for "bringing the honours system into disrepute".

From Wikipedia’s article on Paula Vennells, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Companies

Early life and education

  • Date not recordedManchester High School for Girls3
  • Date not recordedEastern Region Ministry Course3
  • Date not recordedUniversity of Bradford3

Paula Anne Vennells was born on 21 February 1959, in Denton, Lancashire, where she grew up. Her father was an industrial chemist and academic, her mother a great-granddaughter of Sir James Watts of Abney Hall, mayor of Manchester in the 1850s and grandfather of Conservative party member of Parliament James Watts. Having won a funded place, she went to Manchester High School for Girls, then an all-girls direct grant grammar school in Manchester. In 1981, she gained a BA in Russian and French interpreting with Economics at the University of Bradford.

From Wikipedia’s article on Paula Vennells (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: business executive, Anglican priest, businessperson.7

Early career

Vennells decided against being an interpreter and, in 1981, she became a graduate trainee accountant at Unilever. She worked at its subsidiary Van Den Bergh & Jurgens, and also began a foundation course in accountancy. She then began working in marketing, and later at another Unilever company as a junior product manager for pharmaceuticals.

She later had product manager and marketing manager roles for L'Oréal, BAA, and Hamleys. She then became marketing director for Lunn Poly, and later held similar roles for Reed International Exhibitions, Dixons Group and Sears plc. From 1998 to 2001, Vennells was marketing and e-commerce director at Argos (then owned by GUS plc). She then worked as marketing director and then group commercial director at Whitbread until 2006.

Post Office Limited

In January 2007, she joined Post Office Limited as network director, responsible for around 15,000 post offices. In late 2009, she took on the role of network and sales director, a similar role but with additional responsibilities for the national sales department. She became Chief Operating Officer on 1 April 2010 and managing director on 18 October 2010.

On 1 April 2012, she became the company's chief executive officer (CEO), at the same time as it was split from Royal Mail Group to become a separate government-owned company. In 2017, her title became Group CEO, as Post Office Limited expanded.

During her time as CEO, the Post Office went from losing £120 million in 2012/13 to reporting a profit of £35 million in 2017/18. The liabilities now known to have accrued over that period due to the Horizon scandal, however, were estimated in early 2024 to be £160 million in compensation, £298 million in ongoing legal fees already paid, and £1 billion of taxpayers’ money set aside for future compensation.

In her role leading the Post Office, Vennells earned a total of £5.1 million, peaking in 2018 when she received £718,300 in salary, bonuses, pensions and other benefits. In 2016, she was appointed as a non-executive director of supermarket chain Morrisons, in addition to her position at the Post Office.

In February 2019, it was announced that she would step down from her Post Office role, and that month she was appointed as a non-executive board member at the Cabinet Office.

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Later career

In April 2019, she took over as the chair of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust; she resigned from this role in 2021.

Church of England

From 2002 to 2005, Vennells trained for holy orders on the St Albans and Oxford Ministry Course. She was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 2005 and as a priest in 2006. She has served as a non-stipendiary minister at the Church of St Owen, Bromham in the Diocese of St Albans. In January 2024, BBC News reported that sources had told them that, around 2017, when Richard Chartres's tenure as Bishop of London was drawing to a close, Vennells had been interviewed for the post — the third most senior role in the Church of England; she received support from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and reached the final shortlist of three. She relinquished her clerical duties in 2021, but remained an ordained priest as of January 2024.

In April 2021, following the Post Office scandal, Vennells agreed to step back from her duties as an associate minister. Alan Smith, bishop of St Albans and himself the son of a subpostmaster, said that it was "right" that Vennells did so. She stepped down from her membership of the Church of England's Ethical Investment Advisory Group in May 2021.

Horizon IT inquiry

Over three days in May 2024, Vennells gave sometimes tearful evidence to the statutory public inquiry into the Horizon scandal, chaired by Wyn Williams. On the first two days she was questioned by counsel to the inquiry, Jason Beer KC. On the third day it was the turn of counsel for the core participants, including the subpostmaster victims, to question Vennells. Vennells had submitted two witness statements totalling over 798 pages to the inquiry, which she denied was a "craven, self-serving account", as suggested by one of the counsel representing victims.

Much of the evidence heard during the three days related to the extent that Vennells had known of flaws in the Horizon IT system and the unsafe nature of prosecutions of subpostmasters. The inquiry was shown a recent exchange of texts between Vennells and Moya Greene, former CEO of Royal Mail, in which Greene said "I think you knew… How could you not have known?" Asked the same question by Beer, Vennells said "This is a situation that is so complex, it is a question I have asked myself as well."

During her testimony, Vennells consistently stated she was unaware of the facts or, when confronted with documents that showed she had been made aware of them, said she had not understood them. She said she had given MPs incorrect information in 2012 when she told them there had been no unsuccessful Horizon prosecutions. She said that the Post Office had known but she personally had not known. She said she had been "too trusting" and accused five key executives (IT executives Mike Young and Lesley Sewell, and legal general counsels Susan Crichton, Chris Aujard and Jane MacLeod) of having withheld information from her.

In a later session, the inquiry saw an internal paper drawn up in February 2014 by a committee within the Department for Business and the Shareholder Executive which considered options for dismissing Vennells from her CEO role. This followed an annual review which had raised concerns about her people management skills and a lack of knowledge of the business.

From Wikipedia’s article on Paula Vennells (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • CitizenshipUnited Kingdom8
  • ResidenceDenton9

Vennells met her husband, John Wilson, at the Bradford University dinghy club. He is a former global vice-president at the international engineering firm ABB. They married in 1994, have two sons, and live at Box End, near Bedford, in a Grade II listed property.

From Wikipedia’s article on Paula Vennells (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Awards

  • 2019Commander of the Order of the British Empire10 11

Sources

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