My husband would still be alive if he'd got Post Office compensation

A sub-postmaster whose life was ruined by the Post Office's faulty accounting software has died without receiving his full compensation.

Jonathan Armstrong passed away in October from a heart attack at the age of 58.

His widow, Sarah, is now looking into claiming damages against the Post Office for his death, saying the "constant cycle of stress" after being wrongly accused of stealing due to the Horizon IT scandal took its toll on her husband's health.

The Post Office said it was sincerely sorry to hear about Mr Armstrong's death while the government said it was "striving to deliver justice as swiftly as possible".

Their daughter Becky drove to find Jono and by the time she arrived the emergency services had saved him.

Jono is one of 10 sub-postmasters known to have attempted suicide due to the scandal. The Post Office Inquiry also found that more than 13 may have killed themselves.

Jono was sectioned and spent nearly a month in hospital, followed by six weeks in a supervised residence.

The Armstrongs had moved to the UK from Zimbabwe in 2004, fleeing political unrest. A qualified accountant, Jono became a sub-postmaster two years later and Sarah ran the shop.

"It was a lovely little Post Office," recalls Sarah. "We transformed it, quadrupling sales. It was very, very community based."

They won numerous awards including Post Office Retailer in 2014.

But when Jono finally came home he found his contract had been terminated and the family faced a backlash from residents who believed he had been stealing.

He was "a broken man" suffering from anxiety, depression, high blood pressure and exacerbated diabetes, said Sarah.

She took on the role of sub-postmaster accepting the £43,000 of "losses", to avoid Jono being prosecuted. But she had shortfalls, too.

Becky meanwhile had dropped out of university to run the shop and says she worried constantly about her dad.

"When someone has attempted suicide, you don't know if they're going to do it again... he was a shell of what he used to be. He'd just given up on life," says Becky, now 33.

In 2015, they managed to sell the business and moved to Gloucestershire to be closer to Becky's two other siblings.

After Jono submitted his claim for compensation an offer was made two years later - but it was just under a third of what he had claimed for and he rejected it.

It took him a further two years to resubmit his claim because of the time it took to gather new information, including medical reports.

But after waiting seven months, his case was transferred in April into a new appeals process, the HSSA, run by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT). Jono passed away before securing an outcome.

"He died without knowing, and that's heartbreaking to us, because he deserved so much better," says Becky.

Jono had only received an interim payment from the Post Office which he had used to buy a small caravan in a holiday park near Cirencester where Sarah still lives.

Sarah says Jono had been "obsessed' about securing his full financial redress not just as vindication that he had done nothing wrong but to start a new life with his own permanent home and garden, "somewhere in the sunshine".

"If he'd had that compensation, I think he would have been OK. We wouldn't be worrying. He wanted to move away from England. He felt England hadn't been kind to him."

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.