Post Office campaigner Sir Alan Bates to be knighted at Windsor Castle

Sir Alan Bates, the starring campaigner for subpostmasters successful the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, volition person his knighthood astatine Windsor Castle connected Wednesday.

The 70-year-old, of Llandudno successful northbound Wales, is 1 of much than 550 claimants who person brought ineligible enactment against the company, with a nationalist enquiry into what happened successful its last stages.

He was recognised successful the King’s Birthday Honours successful June for his services to justice, having founded the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance.

More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and fixed transgression convictions betwixt 1999 and 2015, arsenic Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT strategy made it look arsenic though wealth was missing astatine their branches.

Sir Alan was portrayed by histrion Toby Jones successful the ITV play Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, with the four-part mini-series helping to renew attraction connected the scandal.

Reacting to his knighthood successful June, helium told the PA quality agency: “It was a spot of a surprise, it benignant of came retired of the blue.

“I’m rather honoured by it – to beryllium recognised for the enactment that I’ve done implicit the years.

“It’s been a hard slog implicit galore years.”

Sir Alan added helium hoped the honour would beryllium “another drawstring to my bow to assistance maine spell guardant and get immoderate finality for people”.

He antecedently turned down being made an OBE portion ex-Post Office main enforcement Paula Vennells held connected to her CBE grant due to the fact that it “felt wrong”, but calls for him to beryllium knighted aft Ms Vennells returned her honour were backed by Number 10 earlier this year.

Bafta Award-winning writer, manager and shaper Armando Iannucci and erstwhile Olympic sprinter Anita Neil are among those besides being honoured astatine the investiture ceremony.

Iannucci, 60, who is champion known for helping to make the Alan Partridge quality and governmental satire The Thick of It, volition beryllium made a CBE for his services to movie and television.

He won 2 Baftas for the works successful 1998 and 2010 respectively portion helium besides picked up 2 Emmys for the US governmental spin-off bid Veep.

Neil volition beryllium made an MBE for her services to athletics having go the archetypal achromatic pistillate to vie for Great Britain astatine an Olympic Games successful 1968.

She ran successful the women’s 100 metres and 4×100 metres relay squad successful Mexico City and astatine the Games successful Munich 4 years later.