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Former Post Office Manager Says She Cannot Recall Preparing Witness Statement in Wolstenholme Dispute

Former Post Office manager Elaine Cottam told the Horizon inquiry she could not remember preparing a statement in the civil dispute involving Cleveleys subpostmaster Julie Wolstenholme.
From TheFinanceBase Team2 min to read

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Former Post Office retail line manager Elaine Cottam told the Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry that she had signed a witness statement for a civil dispute with subpostmaster Julie Wolstenholme but could not remember preparing it. A Computer Weekly report published on 8 November 2023 said the statement described a wider run of Horizon helpdesk call logs than the documents attached to it.

What was the dispute about?

Wolstenholme operated the Post Office branch in Cleveleys, Lancashire. In 2001, after the Post Office sought the return of equipment following the termination of her contract, she counterclaimed that her employment had been unlawfully terminated and raised concerns about the reliability of Horizon.

The case did not reach trial. The parties jointly commissioned an expert report that raised significant questions about Horizon, then settled out of court under a confidentiality agreement. The account of the dispute and Cottam’s testimony was reported by Computer Weekly on 8 November 2023.

What did Cottam tell the inquiry?

Cottam said she did not remember the statement and would not understand the call logs. She also said she had not known there was a civil court case: “I didn’t know there was a civil court [case]. The first I knew that there’d been a court case was when I got this bundle of documents.”

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Asked whether another person might have drafted a statement for her to sign, she replied: “If it’s about contracts and things like that, they would have drafted it for me, definitely.” Her testimony, as reported, describes her lack of recollection and her expectation that contract-related statements might be drafted for her; it does not establish who drafted this particular statement or why.

What was the discrepancy in the call-log attachment?

The statement described call logs covering 10 January to 30 November 2000, but its attachment covered only 9 February to 21 June 2000. According to Computer Weekly’s report, some omitted helpdesk calls had been made by Cottam on Wolstenholme’s behalf and supported that the branch was experiencing Horizon problems.

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Document detail Date span
Call logs described in the statement 10 January–30 November 2000
Call logs in the attachment 9 February–21 June 2000

The difference is between the broader period named in the statement and the shorter period represented in its attachment. The reported discrepancy does not, by itself, show who selected or assembled the records, or establish that Cottam knowingly left out any logs.

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How does this fit the wider Horizon scandal?

The Cleveleys dispute concerned an early challenge to Horizon’s reliability, raised by a subpostmaster in connection with the termination of her contract. The joint expert report’s questions about the system preceded an out-of-court settlement, so the dispute was not resolved through a trial judgment.

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Computer Weekly reported that 93 convictions had been overturned in the Horizon scandal as of its 8 November 2023 publication. That is a dated figure, not a verified current total.

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