Hundreds of former post office operators will be compensated by the Post Office after it accidentally leaked their names and addresses in June 2024.

The Post Office has confirmed that individual payouts will be capped at £5,000, although higher claims may still be pursued.

It comes almost a year after 555 victims of the Horizon IT scandal had their personal details published on the Post Office’s corporate website.

The Post Office said victims would receive £5,000 or £3,500 depending on whether the address published was current.

In a statement, it said: “We have written to all named individuals either directly, or via their solicitors.

“If there are any individuals whose name was impacted by last year’s breach, but who have not received information about the payment for some reason, they can contact us or ask their solicitors if they have legal representation.”

The law firm Freeths said that 348 clients, out of the total 420 it represented, who had their data breached had already received payment. Freeths said it had been told most of those affected would receive a “significant interim compensation payment”.

“We welcome the progress we have made with this case, but there is still a long way to go to recognise the devastating impact of this breach for those affected,” said Will Richmond-Coggan, a lawyer at Freeths.

Chris Head, a former post office operator, told the BBC that while he welcomed the Post Office admitting the data breach error, it had taken “far too long to right this wrong”.

“We cannot underestimate the level of pain, anxiety, stress and worry that so many people have had to suffer through this new episode,” he told the broadcaster. “The impact on myself and my family has been profound on top of an already traumatic past 10 years due to the Horizon scandal.”

News of the data breach first emerged in June last year. The Post Office apologised at the time and said it was working in cooperation with the Information Commissioner’s Office, the regulator for data protection and information rights.

Nick Read, who was chief executive of the Post Office, said at the time that the leak was a “truly terrible error”.

The incident has angered post office operators, many of whom suffered hardship after more than 900 were wrongly prosecuted in what has been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

Last October, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said in her debut budget that the government had set aside £1.8bn to cover all compensation claims. The government is the sole shareholder of the Post Office and is therefore responsible for paying out. Compensation payments have so far ranged from £10,000 to more than £1m.