A POSTMASTER is urging people not to boycott post offices after a television drama triggered a backlash.

There was social media criticism following Mr Bates vs The Post Office on ITV but Malvern's Jenny Cain says the individual businesses need "people's loyalty more than ever before".

The Barnards Green Post Office owner said: "There has been a massive amount of support shown by the public.

"The calls for Paula Vennells (former Post Office Limited CEO) to be stripped of her CBE have got over a million signatures and the government is now hopefully intervening to clear the names of all those involved.

"There are, however, some that have decided the way forward is to boycott the Post Office. Please, please, please don’t boycott us.

"The majority of post offices are privately owned. We employ local people and bring vital services to our communities.

"We work on transactional payments only. There is no base salary and if you don’t walk through our front doors you will be punishing the wrong people. We need support and people's loyalty more than ever before."

The television drama outlined the Horizon scandal when more than 700 postmasters were falsely held accountable for theft, fraud and misrepresentation as Post Office Limited refuted any acknowledgement of blame for the computer system's faults.

Ms Cain, who has been a postmaster for nearly 10 years, continued: "Alan Bates is a superhero because he brought this to the forefront of everybody's agenda.

"We still use the same system. I've just had a £3,000 loss written off after I had a whole year of worry and anxiety that I will need to put £3,000 of my money back into the tills.

"Everyday you almost cross your fingers, close your eyes and hope the figure is going to match what it should do. I love 90 per cent of what I do but the 10 per cent creates a great deal of stress.

"We need government intervention to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. The current board talk about resetting their relationship with postmasters but I don't think they have.

"They get big bonuses, we are massively underpaid and we still use a system that doesn't work. My pay has gone down by 12 per cent in the last four years. The business is only sustained by our retail side.

"The government needs to step in to ensure the compensation is all paid out as quickly as possible and the convictions are quashed."

Today it was revealed Paula Vennells has decided to hand back her CBE.

The Post Office was  not available for comment.