Paula Vennells: Ex-Post Office boss was shortlisted to be Bishop of London

Ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells was shortlisted to be Bishop of London in 2017, sources have told the BBC.

The Rev Paula Vennells is an ordained Anglican priest but does not hold a senior position in the Church of England.

The Archbishop of Canterbury pushed her application and was seen as a supporter of her, two of the sources added.

It comes as Ms Vennells said she would return her CBE amid the fallout of the Horizon scandal.

She ran the Post Office when it routinely denied there was a problem with its Horizon IT system.

More than 700 Post Office branch managers were prosecuted based on information from the faulty software, which made it look like there was money missing from their sites.

Some went to prison following convictions for false accounting and theft, while many were financially ruined.

Ms Vennells has long faced questions over her role in the scandal, which has been described as one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice the UK has ever seen.

But the issue is back in the spotlight following an ITV drama, which was broadcast last week.

Ms Vennells was interviewed for the role of Bishop of London - the third most senior in the Church of England - but not appointed from a final shortlist of three.

She was still chief executive of the Post Office at the time, eventually standing down in 2019 - the same year she was awarded a CBE for services to the Post Office and to charity.

There had been growing calls for her to be stripped of her honour, with a petition passing more than one million signatures this week.

On Tuesday Ms Vennells said in a statement she was returning her CBE with "immediate effect".

"I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system," she said.

She added that she would continue to focus on cooperating with an ongoing public inquiry into the issue.

Ms Vennells was ordained in the Church of England in 2005. She stepped back from her role as an associate minister in the St Albans diocese in 2021 amid intensifying controversy about her Post Office career.

Sarah Mullally, who was formerly England's chief nursing officer before she became a priest, was announced as the first female Bishop of London in December 2017 instead.

A spokesperson for the Church of England said: "We never make any comment on who is a candidate, or not, in what is a confidential discernment process."

Before joining the Post Office in 2007, Ms Vennells worked for beauty brand L'Oréal and hospitality business Whitbread.

Ms Vennells started as a group network director, then became managing director in 2010 before being promoted to the position of chief executive in 2012.

She held the top job until February 2019, when she stepped down amid anger over the Horizon scandal.

Ms Vennells took over as chair of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in April of the same year, but later stepped down, around the same time as a group of former sub-postmasters won a court case to have their convictions quashed.