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Q) Train
Q) Defendunt
Q) Vint
Claim No. HQ 05 X 02706
IN THE BIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
RETWEEN:
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Claimanv
Part 20 Defendant
and
LEE CASTLETON
Defendant’
Part 20 Claimant
WITNESS STATEMENT OF
CHRISTINE TRAIN
I, CHRISTINE TRAIN, of Marinc Drive Post Office, Bridlington WILL SAY as follows:
1. { started work at Marine Drive Post Office in January 1969 at the age of 16 on a Post
Office YI'S scheme, I was trained by the full-time counter clerk who had approximately
12 years experience as the sub-postmistress at that time had only becn in post for around
6 months.
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By the time the post office was sold about 3 ycars later, 1 was working on the counter [ull
time with another assistant and was actually doing more of the work than the actual sub-
postnustress. T was the only member of staff that stayed on when the new owners took
over,
Tirained the new sub-postmaster and his business partner's daughter who covered holiday
periods. T was in effect left to run the post office largely on my own with minimal
assistance. For 13 years, I probably did around 80% of the work myself — I ordered and
rciurned the cash and stuck, did the majority of balancing on my own, changed posters
and leaflets and dealt with all of the changes in procedures as and when required.
Over the yeurs, Marine Drive Post Office has had mayhe 5 or 6 Regional T.inc Managers
and, prior to the problems expericnced by Mr Castleton during his period as sub-
postmastcr, I cannot recall ever having to need one of them to become involved to sort
out any particular problems. Cath Oglesby was the Regional Line Manager for several
years prior to Mr Castleton taking over and was aware of how long I had been at the
office and that { did the majority of the work therc. When she made her routine visits, tt
was me that answered most of her questions — as I did the majority of the work, I was
have a bricf Idk al the revent paperwork to check how balances were and would typically
not stay any longer than an hour. This changed once Mr Castleton tnok over.
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Mr Castleton took over as sub-postmaster in July 2003. His take over date was one of the
worst possible, His first day was a Saturday, the first of the schuol holiday, and su onc of
busiest periods of the year. The shop and post office were even busier than vsual because
the spa complex across the road from the post office was playing host to an international
competition.
Despite the office being so busy, we soon developed a routine. Mr Castleton and his wife
Lisa were quite happy for me to carry on doing things in the same ways I had done
previously and which { was used to. ‘They essentially left me to get on with things. It was
hard work ut first with Mr Castleton being new to running a post office bul we soon
worked how to work together und developed 2 good team relationship.
tn carly 2004, with Christmas and New Year out of the way, Mr Castleton began to think
about what he wanted to do to change the business. He had plans drawn up tu build a new
post office counter so that the shup could be re-fitted and he could introduce new
products. He wanted to make me the manager of the post office, giving me a say in how
the post office would look. We also discussed hiring anothcr assistant to help me whom 1
would train up. Mr Castleton knew I was capable of running the post office side of the
business so ficeing up him and his wife to concentrate on the retail side of the business.
o:.
‘The Lorizon system was installed and rolled out in Marine Drive Post Office in [when?}
I found that in practice it did not really have much effect on the way in which T worked ~
old habits tended (o dic hard and I continued to follow the same routine as I always had. 1
found that this meunt that if something was missed or forgotten, it was not long before it
came to light and so it was possible to avoid having to spend a lot of time back-tracking
and re-checking things.
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In general, if you carry out the week end balance and the system shows a loss, the greater
the loss the casier it tends to be to find it. When in Week 42 we carried out the balance
and the system shows a loss of around £1,100 it was a surprise bul we theught we must
have missed a bundle of notes and a bag of coins. The cash was recounted but we arrived
at exactly the same figure again. 1 was surprised and bemused to say the least, All the
system reports had been run off and we checked the rest of the week’s figures again.
Nothing appeared to be missed out, Mr Castleton kept asking me what we should check
next and what we needed to do to deal with the discrepancy.
We had not expericnecd any problems in the week preceding that balance ~ the cash
declared had been the same as the snapshot everynight. Mr Castleton rang the Tforizon
helpline but I knew that they would just askif each report had been done. I could not
understand how £1,100 could disappea: in one day's wading. I kept thinking that we must
have missed something despite being sure that we had not. If an error of that amount had
been made, it could logically only have been in respect of certain things ~ typically, the
‘ones that are checked the most i.e. Girobank transactions.
My instinct and experience said that we hadn’t missed anything so I was at a loss to know
why we could not find such a large loss. Mr Casticton and 1 ran through the figures yet
again before deciding to call it a night and start from scratch again the following moming
before opening when we would have the benefit of clearer heads and fresher cycs. I spent
most of the night awake going over things in my mind. I felt guilty that Mr Castleton was
luoking to me for ar answer, given my experience, but that I was unable to provide him
with one.
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12. We were unable to identify the source of the problem on the following
meoraing: Ultimately, Mr Castleton-had to make good the £1100 loss orsoin-
cash from his own pocket to allow the system to balunce and so enable us to
roll over for the following week: Any spare moment that week was spent
poring over the Weck 42 figures trying te identify the source of the problem. I
knew from experience that if an operator error is made then it can take up to 6
weeks for it to resolved ut head office and for it to come back to the office. As
much as we both wanted to get to the bottom of the problem, the only thing we
could do was to wait.
13.Cath Oglesby wag due to make one of her routine visits on the following
Friday morniag (week 43). Mr Castleton and J explained to her what had
happened but she simply sat there and said “You'll have made a mistake. 111
come back as and error notive in a few wecks time.” During week 43 the
declared cash af the ead of the day was showing large differences to the
Balance Snapshot. Mrs Oglesby said that the figures would even themselves
out by the end of the week as the Balance Snapshot is not an accurate figure.
Accuriling to the Post Office manual though, the Balance Snapshot is there to
be used as a guide to check for differences. Mrs Oglesby went about the rest of
her business and then left.
14. Obviously, having bad this problem on the balance of week 42, we
conducted.all transactions in the following week even more carefully than
usual. Ou the following Wednesday's balance it showed a loss of around £4250.
The second T saw that, I knew that something strange was happening. There
was no way that we could huve muile a mistake of that size and certainly
nothing involving that amount of money. We generated the transactions logs
and checked everything again so that we could confirm to the Ielpdesk
operator that we had dune so when we called for assistance.
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1 was astounded that she had not asked why we thought that the Horizon system was at
fault or that she did not seem interested in reviewing the paperwork for herself. She
seemed completely disinterested in trying to resolve the problem or cven understanding
how and why it had arisen in the first place. If the Retail Line Manager would not listen,
then who would? We had continucd to make calls to the Horizon helpline but they
seemed unable to assist and we were not receiving any kind of support to resolve the
problems being experienced. The Horizon system uppeared to show thal we were over
£5,000 short in just two weeks trading ~ it was a frightening prospect to wonder what we
tight find come the time to carry out the next week end balance on the following
Thursday.
On carrying out that balance, another shortfall was shown, We made further phone calis
to the helpline hut, again, to no avail. By this point, both Mr Castleton and 1 were very
womicd about the problems being experienced but also by the apparent lack of interest in
helping us to resolve them from the Horizon helpline staff and Mr Castlcton’s line
manager. We did not know what was going on nor what else we had to do before
someone was prepared to take us seriously and help to sort out the problem. No error
notices had been gencrated al the regional head office in Chesterfield so, as far as Mr
Castleton and I were concerned, that really only icf a fault with the Horizon system as
being the source of the problem.
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17. As the weeks went by, the losses continued to accrue. We printed off a great
variety of reports from the system ~ anything and everything, cven things we did
not need to do according to standard Post Office protocol. We looked at
everything we could think of from every conceivable angle. Eventually, the
Horizon helpline suggested carrying out a system check. It took a number of
weeks before one was actually carried out and even then it was not clear what
was actually done nor how deep into the Horizon system those checks actually
went,
18. When the losses reached £8000. we were authorized to transfer the loss figure
into the suspense account sv as to remove it from our daily figures. A loss of
around £3500 occurred that week, When this loss was moved into the suspense
account the Horizon system seemingly did not move if as if should have done.
The figure was added to the £8000 or so in the separate suspense account and on
its allocated line on the final balance but not un the gains line to even liself out
back to a nil balance. The Balancing with Horizon booklet shows how the
suspense account should work and where the figures should be, but the system
did not appear to treat the transfer in the way that it should. By the £3500 not
being shown on the gains line, this kept the total at a £3500 loss as the balance
rolled into the following week. ( see manual for picture explaining how it
shoud've looked.
J9. At Cath Oglesby’s nest visit, her main concern seemed to be how and when
Mr Castleton was going to start making good the losses. Mr Casleton made it
clear that he was nu( refusing to pay the money back but that he wanted
evidence of the error or errors befure he was willing to do so. Rather than try to
assist in getting to the bottom of the problens Mrs Oglesby’s idea of support wax
to arrange a hardship toan to be sent to Mr Castleton and to offer to help him Gil
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The Horizon helpline suggested that we only uscd the gateway computer, that's to say the
principal onc of the two terminaly in the office, to enter lottery transactions and
remittances bul this did not make any difference. The shortfalls appearing cach week did
nat resemble anything on the system af all, It is no cxaggeration to say that two months of
these problems had made Mr Castleton’s and my working life a living hell. The losses
just kept stacking up. It felt like no-one within the Post Office management wanted to do
anything about the whole situation either,
Some 12 weeks after the first losses occurred, and by which tume shortfalls in cxcess of
£20,000 had accrued, Cath Oglesby returned to Marine Drive Post Office. She finally
agreed Utal there was a problem and this could not go on. Tlowever, her response was stil]
to ask what we (i.e Mr Castleton and I) were going to do about it. As far as [ was
concemed, we had done everything we could and had made numerous calls to the Post
Office and Norizon helplines but that we were no further forward than when the shortfalls
first arose. The only thing left to do was to ask for a full audit of the post office.
The audit took place on Tuesday 23 March 2004, a day that will stick in my mind for
quite some time. T arrived at work at around 8.40am to find Helen from the audit team
bad already arnved and started her audit. Mr Castleton was cxplaming lo her the
sequence of events and what had been happening. The post office remained closed all day
and Mrs Oglesby was called by Helen to ask her to come to the office.
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By mid-afternoon, Mrs Oglesby told Mr Castlcton that she would have to suspend him
and remove him trom the post office along with his staff, or that she would have to close
the post office as a whole. This did not really leave Mr Castleton with much choice so, in
order (o keep the office open for his customers, he agreed to her demand. I was mortified
at the action being taken and at being removed from my job. It seemed to me that we
were being made to feel as though we had stolen the moncy.
Mrs Oglesby arranged for someone she knew from another post office to come and take
over, She assured us that the office would be run as normal with two staff. Ruth Simpson
subsequently arrived. She checked and signed for the cash and stock, signed for it and the
auditors left. Before she left that day, fTelen said to Lisa Castleton and { words to the
cliect that Mrs Ogleshy should have stopped this situation after 3 weeks, never mind
leaving us with this problem for 3 months.
Mrs Oglesby was in the office with Ruth Simpson for quite sume time. It was apparent
that they knew cach other very well. At around 6pm, they came out of the office. I had
waited and offered to show Mrs Simpson where everything was but Mrs Oglesby said
thal Mrs Simpson would manage and made it clear that my assistance was not required.
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26, J arrived at work the following day tired from tack of sleep as } had spent
most of the night awake trying te work out how things had come to this. I was
apprehensive as to what would happen when our customers saw that we were
not in the office. We were busy enough to need 2 staff most of the time so when
Mrs Simpson arrived on her owa 1 was somewhat surprised. Despite Mrs
Oglesby having said that the office would be staffed as it usually was, Mrs
Simpson said she had discussed it with Cath and that she would manage un her
own. She would oaly bring clse on a Monday.
27. At this point, Mrs Simpson still had to produce » cash account for that
week despite it being only I day’s trading after the audit. ] would have
expected her to be finished by 6pm easily but she did not leave uatil nearer
7pm. She had been on her mobile phone In the office for much of that time. It
was apparent that something was amiss from the length of time she spent on
the phone and the aumber of calls she was making.
28.Following the balance week ending 31/03/2004 Mrs Simpson arrived the
following morning, added the lottery transactions from the previous day and
finighed the balance. Hawever as she opened at 9am the computer system went
down, Ordinarily, a system reboot yhould take around 10 minutes, On this
occasion it was almost 3 hours before the system was usable again, Based on
my experience of it dving so, this is more like the time it takes for a full
download. When Horizon was first installed the full system download took
around 3 to 4 hours and 4 reboot 20 mins, Now is it nearer 10mins for # system
reboot and is usually done after such occurrences us power cuts or breaks in
the phone line connections. On that particular morning there was no power cut
to the premises.
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29, Once the post office was open, there was a constant queue. Customers complained all day
long at the length of time to took them to be served as they were not uscd to having to
wait like thal, I tried to keep busy in the shop but every 5 minutes or so Mrs Simpson
would ask me where something was. Mondays proved to be even worse as they are
usually the busiest day ~ despite the fact that Mrs Simpson had an assistant working with
her on Monduys, things did not improve. Ucr assistant was nol much help. she was slow
and surly with the customers.
30. Lt got to the point where I could not bear to be m the shop and sec what was happening to
the post office. I felt sick watching my high standards and all my hard wark over the
years I had worked there being destroyed, [he customers cumpluined constantly to me,
even when they saw me outside the shop in the supermarket or on the street, In just 4
weeks, Mrs Simpson had manage to lose about 1/3 of the office's regular customers.
3k. Mrs Oglesby then arranged in ays for Greg Booth to take over as the temporary
sub-postmuster. [le was thorough but incredibly slow. He did at least recognise the need
for additional staff and so enlisted the help o! f GRO ~Yyoa, Who had 30 years
experience of working in post offices. I knew that she would be more considerate to our
customers and would do what she could tv help for my sake. Mr Booth managed tw full
out with a number of customers. Hy the time he Icft sume 4 weeks later, he had managed
to alienate yet more of uur regular customers.
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32. During the time thal Mr Booth was the temporary sub-postmasicr, Mrs Oglesby visited t
the office and took all of the paperwork covering the period of the misbalances. } (ried to
get her to clarify the way that the suspense account should work but she either would not
or could not give me a reasonable answer. In her view, the £3,500 that had been placed
into the suspense account but which did not appear to us to have been properly dealt with
by the system was just another loss because it showed up on ils correct linc despite it
missing from the gain line at the top of the final balance, Mrs Oglesby took the
paperwork away with her to review before then contacting Mr Castleton to arrange 4
mecting to discuss his suspension.
33. Lhis meeting took place at Darlington Area Office. lt was attended by Mrs Oglesby und
Tesley Joyce, the Contracts Manager, on behalf of the Post Office and by Mr Castleton
and me. Mrs Oglesby when through things week by week and Mr Castleton was asked
whether he had taken the money. Again, he stated that he had nut and that nor had his
staff. Tle pointcd out that no error notices had been sent by the Post Office to suggest
human error either. ‘he suspense account error was discussed once again but Mrs
Oglesby insisted that it was still a loss.
34, About a week latcr, Mr Castleton received a letter confirming thal his contract had been
terminated. Ile had been expecting that, following the meeting, but it did not make it any
easier to take when it finally happened. I1 seemed to me tw be such an unfair decision as
Lee had not done anything wrong and at every step had been honest with Post Office
management in the hope and cxpectation that they would ussist him in resolving the
problem.
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35.Mr Castleton immediately took steps to arrange an appeal meeting, The
mecting inok place at Darlington Head Office with Mr John Jones,a Network
Reinvention Manager. Mr Castletons termination was upheld by Mr Joncs.
Accurding to the Subpustmasters contract, appeals are to be heard by an
independent party. Neither the veaue nor personnel involved were independent
of Post Office Ltd.
36. When the final account arrived from Chesterfield asking for the losses tu be
made good, there were actually 3 error notices. Two were National Lottcry
errors made on the 24 and 25 March after Mr Casticton’s suspension. The other
was a Natiunal Savings & Investments error relating to 2 deposit made by [
which had not been processed correctly by NS&L The latter
was brought to Post Office managements attention by Mr Casticton at the time
but they did nothing about it. The problem had not been solved until Mr
Castleton took the matter to NS&I direct,at which it was resolved swiftly.
37. Both Mr Castletons and my user names were deleted from the Lorizon
systerm at Marine Drive Post Office when we were removed from the office on
23 March. Any transactions after that could aut have been carried out by us
since a) we had both had been suspended and b) we physically could not carry
out the transactions in any event since we hud no uscr name to log onto the
system with.
38. Dorothy Day took over as temporary sub-postmistress at the end of May 2004
and she has remained in position since then. Mrs Oglesby was not present on the
appointed take over day and as Mes Day had not previously worked with
National Lottery terminals she called Mrs Oglesby to tell her. Mrs Oglesby said
that she was toe busy to come and sce Mrs Day but would send out a trainer
instead. This was of no help when the lottery figures needed te be entered the
following morning. I had to talk Mra Day through the process so that she was
able to balance.
39. in fact it was almost 2 months before Mrs Oglesby arrived to see Mrs Day for
the first time. On that visit Mrs Oglesby informed Mrs Day that I had been
cleared of any wrong doing and asked whether Mrs Day would have me back to
work in the office Mrs Day said she would be happy to do so.
40. Following my reinstatement to assist Dorothy, I went through Mrs Simpsons
paperwork and found the lottery tickets loose in an cavelope that had not been
entered which created the error notices. There is alsu 2 summary on which she
wrote the amount of cash received from the shop ou her first in post. Not having
a lottery icrminal herself, she hud made a mistake and did not account for the
prize money already paid out. This should’ve been given back to Mr Castleton or
at feast shown in the balance as being » gain but it was not.
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41.1 believe that the contents of this statement arc true.
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