UPDATE 2-UK Post office chairman to depart in fallout from Horizon IT scandal

(Recasts, changes source, adds UK government spokesperson's statement in paragraphs 2-3)

Jan 27 (Reuters) - The chairman of the UK Post Office will step down, the government said on Saturday, amid growing frustration over the state-owned company's governance as it reels from a scandal which led to the wrongful conviction of hundreds of sub-postmasters.

British business minister Kemi Badenoch and Post Office Chair, Henry Staunton, "agreed to part ways with mutual consent" in a phone call earlier, a government spokesperson said in a statement.

An interim chair would be appointed shortly and a recruitment process for a new chair will be launched in due course. Staunton joined the Post Office board in December 2022.

Amid mounting public anger, Britain is moving to quash convictions and pay compensation after the self-employed sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were wrongly prosecuted or convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting between 1999 and 2015.

Japan's Fujitsu is under pressure because the Post Office workers were convicted as a result of glitches in the Horizon software developed by the company.

Last week, Fujitsu said it would work with the British government on "appropriate actions" including compensation, based on the findings of an inquiry into the scandal.

Postal minister Kevin Hollinrake said on Wednesday that Fujitsu should be contributing hundreds of millions of pounds to pay the compensation bill the government is expecting over the scandal. (Reporting by Devika Nair, Rishabh Jaiswal and Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru; Editing by Giles Elgood and Clelia Oziel)