Post Office scandal victim tells how it devastated her life, but how she’s learning to live with it
Summary
A victim of the Post Office scandal from Cheltenham has opened up about how it devastated her life and greatly affected her family. Wendy Buffrey says that although she finally received compensation for being wrongfully convicted of stealing money from the Up Hatherley Post Office she used to run, it was not enough to enable her to retire.
Details
So, at 67, she is still working – having started her own fire risk assessment business last November. She said: “My son David is working with me and we’re doing very well. “But had my pay out – which I got at the beginning of 2025 – been more, I wouldn’t have had to go back to work.” Her long ordeal saw her accused of stealing money, convicted of theft in court and finally having her conviction quashed.
The agony, caused by the Post Office’s malfunctioning Horizon machines, stretched from 2008 to 2021. That has taken its toll on Mrs Buffrey, who lives with her husband Doug in the Springbank area of the town. She said the stress and lack of sleep that the struggle caused had left her with fibromyalgia, a long-term condition that causes widespread pain throughout the body.
She said: “I’m in pain all the time, although I find that going swimming helps. “But this is not something that goes away and they’re not sure exactly what causes it.” Mrs Buffrey said the whole experience had been an extremely difficult one for her, Doug and their four children – one of whom tragically died in an accident.
She added: “It affected all of the family and something in you dies when you go through something like this. It doesn’t come back.” Recalling the 2024 ITV drama about the scandal that raised public awareness of it to an even greater level, Mrs Buffrey said: “None of it was really a surprise for me.
I knew a lot of the real people who featured in it and it was worse than in the programme.” But she has got on with her life in a positive way, managing to get to a point where she now feels able to talk about what happened and share how she feels about it. Asked if she is cross about what the scandal did to her, she said: “I’m not cross now. I’ve had a lot of counselling so I can talk about it.
“I still get a little bit angry but I don’t invest the emotion into it any more that I used to.” Part of the process of getting on with her life has seen her spend less time campaigning for justice for the thousands of sub postmasters in the UK whose lives were affected by the false accusations and convictions. She said: “I have stepped back a bit. It’s time for other people to hold the torch.
Although I received my compensation in 2025, there are still over 1,000 people waiting for theirs.” Mrs Buffrey misses the people she used to come across when she was at the heart of the Up Hatherley community – working in the post office in Hatherley Road, which was also her home.
Report source: Punchline Gloucester