Thomas Millward, who ran the branch in Trunch, was forced to move his young family into a static caravan after being accused of stealing £5,000 and four counts of false accounting.

His prosecution turned him from a sociable character at the heart of village life into a recluse who had to live with the shame of his conviction and the widespread belief - including among members of his own family - that he had been stealing.

Former Norfolk sub-postmaster Thomas Millward pictured alongside his family outside the post office in Trunch in 1988 (Image: Supplied)

Now, 25 years after his prosecution and eight years on from his death in 2018, Mr Millward’s conviction has been quashed after the Ministry of Justice found he was wrongfully convicted based on Horizon IT evidence.

It followed a campaign by his daughter, Isobel Saunders, to clear his name.

Mrs Saunders, who was a child at the time of her father's prosecution, said it was important that the village of Trunch knew her father had been vindicated.

Thomas Millward, pictured in the back garden of the post office in Trunch, which the family lived above (Image: Supplied)

“I hope that some of the people who still live in Trunch, and those who still remember my father, will now know the truth about him," she said.

"It feels like a confirmation that the shame we've carried as a family, and the weight of judgment we felt from our community, which was the only community I had ever known at the time, wasn't right and shouldn't be a source of shame.

"I feel that's quite important."

Isobel Saunders at the old post office building in Trunch, with the letter quashing her father Thomas Millward's conviction (Image: Denise Bradley)

Mr Millward had moved his family from Buckinghamshire to Trunch in 1988 to run the village post office.

In November 2000, he was accused by the Post Office of stealing £5,000 and convicted of four counts of false accounting the following year.

He was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and ordered to pay back the money, forcing him to sell their family home above the village post office.

It led to Mr Millward, his wife Margaret, and their two young children, Andrew and Isobel, becoming homeless, moving into a static caravan lent to them by a friend in the village.

Mrs Saunders, who was two when the family moved to Trunch, said: “It was a great well of shame within the family."

She added: “It destroyed my father. He was never the same again because of the shame and the belief, even in his own family, that he had been stealing.

The old post office building in Trunch (Image: Denise Bradley)

“He very quickly went from being an outgoing, social person who was very well known in the village, to becoming a recluse. My parents never really socialised again.

“But we still lived in the village and remained very visible. I remember going to school and the other kids saying things and having to wait at the bus stop, which was outside the post office we used to live in."

Mr and Mrs Millward both ended up working in a crab factory in Cromer.

"They went from running their own business to working on the factory floor.

"At least there nobody knew because it was outside of the village, but it was not a nice environment to work in.

"They were treated like idiots in the factory, which was part of the shame. They were never the same again.

"My father just stopped speaking. He would never discuss anything. His thoughts and feelings were never shared."

Isobel Saunders at the old post office building in Trunch, holding a picture of her late father, Thomas Millward (Image: Denise Bradley)

Mrs Saunders, 40, said her mother, who passed away in July last year, was "traumatised" after watching Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the ITV dramatisation of the Post Office scandal which first aired in 2024.

The TV series brought national attention to the scandal, piling on political pressure and demands for justice and compensation for wrongfully prosecuted sub-postmasters.

The Post Office Horizon IT scandal is widely regarded as the UK’s worst miscarriage of justice.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub‑postmasters were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty data from Horizon - an electronic point‑of‑sale and accounting software system built by Fujitsu, which was rolled out across the Post Office network to replace manual accounting.

Many were imprisoned, bankrupted or forced to repay alleged shortfalls from their own savings.

The old post office building in Trunch (Image: Denise Bradley)

"The scene from the show where they trooped into Jo Hamilton's kitchen was exactly what happened to us," Mrs Saunders, from Horsford, said.

"They basically said to my father: 'If you plead guilty, we can mitigate it, so instead of theft it will be false accounting and you'll be unlikely to get a prison sentence. However, if you don't confess to false accounting, it will be theft, and you'll likely go to prison.'

"I had been thinking about trying to get dad's conviction quashed for a while, so I had a brief discussion with my mum about it, but she said she didn't want anything to do with the Post Office ever again.

“I always wanted to know if he was actually embezzling money or caught up in the Horizon scandal like so many others."

The Trunch village sign (Image: Denise Bradley)

In a bid to clear his name, she contacted the group set up by Katie Downey, whose family fled to France after her father Tony was made bankrupt in the scandal.

Ms Downey put her in touch with the solicitor Neil Hudgell, one of the leading lawyers representing and campaigning for justice and compensation for sub‑postmasters caught up in the scandal.

Together, they managed to quash her father's conviction a quarter of a century after his prosecution.

Mr Millward died of metastatic lung cancer, a cancer which spreads from the lungs to other parts of the body, in 2018.

The old Trunch post office closed on the day it was audited by the Post Office in November 2000. The building has since been converted into a residential property.

The post office counter was transferred to another shop in the village, which closed in 2022.

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