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Finsbury Dials
20 Finsbury Street
London
EC2Y 9AQ
18t September 2022
Dear Permanent Secretary,
Engaging with the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry and implementing
change
On 23 May 2022 you wrote to me asking that, by the end of the parliamentary
summer recess, I should provide you with a written response detailing the
assurance, both internal and external, that the Post Office Board is putting in place
to demonstrate what changes have been, or are in the process of being, made to
Post Office’s systems and processes so that they are fit for purpose. In your letter
you rightly recognised that Post Office’s ability to evidence these changes is a key
objective for its current Board and management team. In particular, as we continue
to engage with the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, that we are able to demonstrate
that Post Office has taken the right actions since the Group Litigation Order and
that where we can we have successfully put in place measures to prevent the same
mistakes from happening again. Where measures take time to implement, either
because they relate to more fundamental aspects of Post Office’s operating model
or its culture, we should still be able to demonstrate what has been done so far,
and what plans we have to continue making progress in response to Justice
Fraser’s criticisms.
The purpose of this letter is therefore to satisfy your request, by setting out: the
principal findings of the Common Issues Judgement (CIJ) and Horizon Issues
Judgement (HIJ); discovery work on the CIJ and HIJ undertaken by Post Office;
Post Office’s realised, in-flight and planned responses to Justice Fraser’s findings;
and the assurances sought by Post Office in relation to these actions. I have set
this letter out in three principal parts, covering each of the judgements separately
and also POL’s Cultural Change Programme.
The Common Issues Judgement
Principal Findings
In the CIJ in March 2019 Justice Fraser made significant findings about the
contractual relationship between Post Office and operators of Post Offices, in
particular the implied duty of good faith and other associated contractual terms
which included principles such as fair dealing, transparency, cooperation, and trust
and confidence. The judgement also made a number of critical comments about
Post Office’s past, current and perceived working practices. Together these raised
fundamental questions for how Post Office both operates its business and manages
its relationship with Postmasters.
The CIJ did not prescribe how the implied terms should be reflected in Post Office’s
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operational processes, though Post Office’s objective since the judgement was
handed down has been to make sure these are consistent with the implied terms
and are aligned with the points made in criticisms. In doing so Post Office has had
to apply judgement in planning and executing a range of changes in its business,
including both bringing forward changes planned prior to the CIJ and making
changes specifically in response to it.
Discovery Work Undertaken
Immediately following the CIJ, Post Office prioritised a contract review and
restatement exercise to reflect the relational characteristics of the contract called
out by Justice Fraser and to make sure that all new and existing Postmaster
contracts included, or were restated to include, the implied terms he set out in his
judgement. In addition, an end-to-end review of the findings listed in the
judgement was carried out by Post Office and the output of this was shared with
Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF), who undertook a gap analysis of these improvements
against best practice. NRF’s report, which was issued in June 2020, set out a series
of recommendations to ensure Post Office’s alignment with the CIJ. It also
synthesised the findings of the judgement into nine themes which Post Office has
used to order its catalogue of CIJ related activities. These themes are: onboarding;
training; audit; shortfalls; loss prevention; transaction corrections and disputes;
suspensions; terminations; and culture and communications.
Further to this report, in 2020 a project called ‘Shine a Light’ was initiated within
the Historical Matters Business Unit in Post Office to review the CIJ and identify
areas of potential improvement.
To supplement the NRF and ‘Shine a Light’ reviews, in early 2021 Post Office also
commissioned Deloitte to assess the extent to which the business had moved
towards its stated aim of ‘putting Postmasters at the heart of the business’. This
Postmaster Journey report was published in March 2021 and identified a number
of completed improvement actions as well as a series of further recommendations.
Finally in June 2021 a stock report, issued by Post Office’s Group Compliance
function, was published which listed specific recommendations related to stock
management processes which up to that point had not been considered in the
same level of detail in other discovery work. Some of these recommendations were
considered relevant to the CIJ.
Post Office considers that the NRF review, the ‘Shine a Light’ review, the
Postmaster Journey Report and the stock report represent a comprehensive
assessment of the business’s position with respect to the CIJ, and that the
recommendations put forward in these documents define the actions that need to
be taken to evidence, with confidence, Post Office’s conformance with the
judgement. Post Office also recognises that no business is ever constant and since
the last reports were released in mid-2021 it has continued to challenge systems
and processes to make sure they are fit for purpose. Through this business as
usual activity Post Office has identified further issues that need to be addressed,
and it has either taken action or it has put in place clear plans to do so. Post Office
has been in discussion with BEIS on these matters since the second half of 2021.
To track all improvements the Improvement delivery group (IDG) was set up in
February 2021 to provide oversight at Group Executive level within Post Office
overall improvement identified from the HIJ, CIJ as well as business as usual. It
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has also made sure that all delivery milestones and improvements are assured to
the appropriate level and second line oversight is in place, and that actions are
tested as robust and effective. IDG is the principal means for reporting to the Post
Office Board on these matters.
Summary of POL’s Realised, In-Flight and Planned Responses
The reports and steps outlined in the preceding section have resulted in a catalogue
of 447 CIJ related actions being identified by Post Office, which are tracked by the
IDG and are categorised to aid oversight, delivery and assurance.
Category of CIJ Related Action
Onboarding
Training
Audit
Shortfall
Loss Prevention
Transaction Corrections and Disputes
Suspensions
Terminations
Culture and Communications
Total
The principal form of categorisation used by Post Office is the colour impact ratings
set out in the Deloitte Postmaster Journey report, which defines actions that: are
needed to ensure Post Office’s conformance with the CIJ; help to mitigate the risk
of possible detriment, and therefore the potential for non-compliance with the CIJ;
improve the experience of Postmasters and are consistent with the spirit of the
CIJ; and would be beneficial to Postmasters and are consistent with Post Office’s
purpose. This methodology has been consistently applied by Post Office across the
full catalogue of CIJ related actions helping to prioritise activity, allocate resources
and funding and focus assurance work where the need is greatest.
Delivery against these is monitored closely and as reported to the Board on 12 July
2022, 407 actions were considered to be complete and 36 were still in active
delivery, including 3 urgent-priority actions (6% of all actions in this category), 16
high-priority actions (12%), 15 medium-priority actions (7%) and 2 low priority
actions (3%). All urgent-priority actions are related to the second phase of
Postmaster detriment remediation where Post Office has identified areas where
there is the risk of potential detriment, and the existence of detriment is still being
established, or where detriment has been established and confirmation from BEIS
on funding or sign-off from the Post Office Board on the approach to be taken, is
still needed. Post Office expects 443 of the 447 actions to be complete before the
end of March 2023 including all urgent-priority and 98% _ high-priority
improvements.
Four actions are currently on hold. One of these is high-priority and relates to the
re-platforming of Post Office’s support tools, to give the business better insight
into issues facing Postmasters across what are currently standalone systems. This
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has been put on hold due to the complexity of an integration, as well as capacity
and cost constraints, though while it is paused reporting at Group Executive has
been improved to provide more comprehensive oversight at an aggregated level
and locally Postmasters do also have access to new reporting accessible through
Branch Hub. The three other actions on hold are within Post Office’s Supply Chain
and these have been paused pending delivery of the business’s future stock
management strategy. Progress against these may still take place in the future,
though this will be subject to senior management agreement and the availability
of sufficient funding..
Post Office’s detriment remediation programme continues, with the aim to
investigate areas where current practices adopted by the business may give rise
to potential detriment, and therefore where it could be non-conformant with the
CIJ. Where further actions are identified through this process - considered a
possible outcome - they will be scored against the same colour impact rating
method and be planned accordingly. There is presently no funding capacity within
Post Office to remedy any issues that are identified in the future which means,
subject to the nature and scale of any actions that are required or detriment that
is established, additional support would be required from BEIS.
Finally, Post Office is also in active discussion with the National Federation of
SubPostmasters (NFSP) to redefine the relationship between the two parties, ina
manner that responds to the criticisms set out by Justice Fraser. Post Office is
engaging openly in this process.
Overview of Selected CIJ Related Actions Completed by Post Office
A full list of the actions the business has undertaken is available on request, but
for the purposes of this letter I have set out below a summary of some of the most
important and impactful achievements.
e A restructuring that focuses the business on Postmasters, with better
regular reporting on CIJ metrics to the Group Executive and Board;
e All automatic deductions from Postmaster remuneration have been
stopped, unless these have otherwise been agreed with Postmasters;
e An independent appeal panel has been set up, including former Postmasters,
to review disputed investigations, suspensions and terminations;
e A rigorous discrepancy investigation process is now in place that is
straightforward, and includes processes to improve quality and consistency;
e A suite of clear policies have been introduced to ensure all Postmaster
support practices are consistent with Post Office’s duty of good faith; and
e Branch Hub has launched as a portal for Postmaster communications,
trading data, chat help, e-forms, and other day-to-day operational support;
e New training, content and learning aids have been developed to support
Postmasters better in how they run their branch and grow their businesses;
e New Postmaster onboarding is now simpler, with a single-point of contact,
and with average time to onboard reducing from over a year to 5 months.
Post Office is already seeing benefits from these actions. As a result of
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improvements made to investigations processes, also combined with changes
made in response to the HIJ findings, we have seen a 185% increase in discrepancy
cases as it has become easier to raise a dispute on Horizon, and we have also seen
a 95% reduction in aged Transaction Corrections. In addition, suspension numbers
have reduced significantly from 200 in FY18/19 pre CIJ to 25 within FY21/22 with
only 10 to date this year. The launch of Branch Hub, which responds to findings in
the CIJ and HIJ, has also been very positively received by Postmasters, and we
continue to develop this platform to make it more accessible and to extend its
functionality.
Assurances Sought by Post Office in Relation to These Actions
In addition to oversight of the delivery of CIJ related actions by IDG, Post Office
has also commissioned five separate reviews from its’ Internal Audit function (IA),
supplemented by subject matter expertise from Deloitte. The aim of these reviews
has been to provide an independent view of the actions that have been completed,
with a particular focus on validating the delivery status of critical actions (i.e.
urgent-priority and high-priority), to evidence the business’s conformance with the
CIJ. Given the large number of actions completed by Post Office these reviews
have not assured everything that has been delivered however as reported to the
12 July 2022 Board meeting 78% of the 407 completed actions had been checked
and of these only 19 had been highlighted as requiring further remediation. Of
these 14 have now been validated and confirmed as closed.
In September 2021 NRF issued a review that included an assessment of the actions
taken or that were planned by Post Office at that date, to provide an additional
external opinion on whether Post Office was either conformant, or on a path to
conformance, with the CIJ. As part of this NRF recognised that the business must
exercise judgement in interpreting the findings and in how it changes its practices.
NRF also acknowledged that Post Office’s ambition was not to achieve a narrow
measure of technical conformance with the CIJ but instead to go beyond this, and
operate in a way that was consistent the spirit of the findings. This characterisation
of Post Office’s ambition informed NRF’s approach.
The report considered 43 separate themes and sub-themes that were identified in
the judgement and found that Post Office was either fully or substantively
conformant in 24 of these, and on the path to substantive conformance in a further
10. For the remaining nine areas, Post Office needed to develop a path to
substantive conformance on three and five were not scored as these either
overlapped with other themes considered by NRF, NRF considered them to go
beyond the scope of the CIJ or they were technical in nature and it was agreed
that they would be addressed within the scope of the HIJ remediation work. The
final theme was not rated because NRF concluded that the relevant CIJ criticism —
related to individual Postmasters being able to negotiate their own terms with Post
Office - did not require Post Office to take any further steps.
The three themes where NRF determined POL needed to develop a path to
substantive conformance related to the need: for a wide-ranging contract reform
programme, in response to Justice Fraser’s criticism that Post Office’s contracts
were unnecessarily long and confusing; for a sustainable approach to the recovery
of established losses, as although Post Office had mostly stopped recovering these
(i.e. unless recovery had been agreed with a Postmaster), it still needed a clear
recovery policy for when civil recoveries were restarted; and for Post Office to
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finalise its discussions with the NFSP on the two parties’ future relationship.
Notwithstanding the contract review and restatement exercise actioned by POL
immediately following the CIJ, POL has not yet undertaken a comprehensive
contract reform programme given the complexity and distraction such an exercise
would involve. However it remains a task that Post Office intends to look at in the
future when circumstances are more supportive. The second has been progressed
and a clear end-to-end process has now been agreed for civil recoveries, though
actual recoveries have not yet restarted unless agreement to do so has been
reached with a Postmaster. Subsequent to the CIJ any suspected criminal activity
will be notified to relevant law enforcement agencies. Finally, the third is an active
workstream which Post Office hopes to bring to a conclusion in the coming months.
Based on the NRF report, the progress Post Office has made against the catalogue
of CIJ related actions, including since the NRF report was issued, as well as the
findings of IA, by the end of March 2023 the business expects to be fully or
substantively conformant against 40 of the 43 themes and sub-themes identified
by NRF. It will also be on the path or have visibility of a path to substantive
conformance in the rest.
The Horizon Issues Judgement
Principal Findings
In December 2019, Justice Fraser summarised his findings from the Judgement
into 15 Horizon Issues. For clarity of understanding and to aid delivery, Post Office
has grouped actions as a result of these issues into five key areas: accuracy and
integrity of data; controls and measures to prevent / fix bugs and system
development; remote access; availability of information and report writing;
integrity of transaction data, branch trading statements, shortfalls and transaction
corrections.
These findings are also consistent with certain implied duties and terms outlined
in the CIJ, specifically to: provide a system which was reasonably fit for purpose,
including adequate error repellency; properly and accurately effect, record,
maintain and keep records of all transactions in Horizon; properly and accurately
produce all relevant records, explain all relevant transactions, and any alleged or
apparent shortfalls.
While the nature of the HIJ means that compliance with the issues identified by
Justice Fraser is difficult to establish beyond doubt, without a challenge being taken
to and a decision being passed down by the courts, Post Office has sought to take
the steps it and its assurance partners consider necessary to comply. In doing so
Post Office has had to look externally for expert advice but also, recognising that
Horizon is a live trading system, prioritise changes so as to achieve an acceptable
balance between the actions that need to be taken and the need to minimise
disruption to Postmasters and to the operation of the Post Office branch network.
The future replacement of the Horizon system with New Branch IT (NBIT) is a
particularly relevant consideration in this planning and prioritisation as it provides
Post Office with an opportunity to make more material changes versus today in
terms of how its core IT system is developed, operated and assured.
Notwithstanding, Justice Fraser did also recognise that HNG-A, the version of
Horizon that was operational at the time the judgement was passed, was far more
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robust than the version that was operational in and before 2017 and he considered
HNG-A to be relatively robust. He did not however specify which of the fifteen
issues he identified pertained only to the pre-2017 Horizon system and therefore
which ones still needed to be addressed and / or otherwise remedied by Post Office.
Discovery Work Undertaken
Since the HIJ, Post Office has committed itself to identify and remedy the issues
which led to the HIJ findings, and it has set up a project led by a newly created
and dedicated Horizon IT team which sits within Post Office IT (initially supported
by KPMG’s specialise IT team) to enable this. Since being established in November
2020 this team has undertaken an extensive gap analysis in respect of the HI)
findings to establish POL’s current position against the judgement’s themes, define
a recommended target end-state and determine the actions that need to be taken
to deliver that position. This has had a focus on: historical issues; characterising
bugs, errors or defects; and defining ‘robustness’, and a series of outcomes and
actions have been identified that have the intent to move Post Office towards a
targeted position of substantive or sustained remediation against the issues raised
in the judgement.
These categories mean that Post Office has either remedied an issue, subject to
minor deficiencies or efficiency / effectiveness improvements (i.e. substantive
remediation), or it has remedied an issue and has the capability to sustain that
remedy into the future (i.e. sustained remediation). Both are considered by Post
Office to represent a substantively conformant or conformant position against the
HIJ.
As part of this workstream the Horizon IT team and KPMG have applied certain IT
industry standards with a view to developing the maturity of the Horizon system
and its surrounding management processes in a way which meets best practice
expectations in terms of IT management, governance and controls. This goes
beyond the specific findings of the HIJ.
Summary of POL’s Realised, In-Flight and Planned Responses
The activities outlined in the preceding section have resulted in 79 actions being
identified which link to the findings made in the HIJ. Like the CIJ related actions,
these have been tracked by the IDG and categorised to aid oversight, delivery and
assurance, and where possible Post Office has sought to take a consistent approach
across both the CIJ and HIJ, though in certain areas this has been challenging
given differences between the two judgements and the nature of the actions
themselves.
So far outcomes have been delivered across two completed phases of remediation
work, and a third phase commenced in Summer 2022. The first of these was
focused on diagnosing the actions that needed to be taken, and delivering a
number of ‘fast fixes’ on priority areas, and the second was targeted at
substantively or sustainably remediating a number of the HIJ issues. The third
phase is making further progress towards substantive or sustained remediation,
prioritising those actions that Post Office considers most necessary for its
conformance with Justice Fraser's findings in the HIJ while also being subject to
the capacity and funding constraints the business faces. This phase does not
therefore include all possible or desirable actions that Post Office could undertake.
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Delivery against the outcomes is monitored closely and as reported to the Board
meeting on 12 July 2022, 63 outcomes were considered to have been delivered
with 16 still in-flight. At the conclusion of the second phase eight of the twelve HIJ
issues had been substantively or sustainably remediated and the remaining seven
were on a path to substantive remediation. Some but not all of these are expected
be substantively or sustainably remediated by the end of the third phase of the
Horizon remediation work.
Overview of Selected HIJ Related Actions Completed by Post Office
The actions Post Office have delivered are aligned to the fifteen HIJ issues, and
over the past eighteen months a considerable amount has been achieved by the
Horizon IT team. This includes fundamental changes to how Horizon is operated
and overseen, as well as other actions that benefit Postmasters and reduce the
risk of errors being made. A full list actions completed is available on request, but
for the purposes of this letter I have set out below a summary of some of the more
important and impactful achievements.
e All historical Known Error Logs (KELs) have been checked and tested to
ensure they are not in HNG-A and Post Office’s defect management
capability has also been significantly enhanced;
e Testing has been improved and it now happens earlier in the development
cycle, including 1,300 regression test scripts and regular penetration testing
to ensure changes are robust and the system is secure;
e Access protocols and supporting processes have been improved, making the
system more secure and improving Post Office’s visibility of who is accessing
Horizon and for what purpose;
e A dispute button has been added to Horizon which gives Postmasters the
opportunity to challenge a potential shortfall in branch accounts. The lack of
this ability to challenge was a fundamental criticism in the HIJ;
e A ‘Horizon Design Forum’ has been established to review and prioritise
Horizon system improvements. This is supported by a Postmaster working
group which to date has sought input from >250 Postmasters;
¢ Over 200 IT controls related to Horizon have been consolidated and moved
into a new compliance and risk management tool, which is now routinely
attested by trained IT staff;
e More than 145 data and use journeys have been assessed and Transaction
Corrections have been analysed to establish root causes, helping to identify
areas where improvements to Horizon could be made; and
e The Horizon user interface has been tidied up to remove and relocate
buttons, helping to reduce user error and the risk of Transaction Corrections.
40,000 redundant Horizon user IDs have also been deleted.
The third phase of the Horizon remediation work commenced in the Summer and
includes: developing the front-end of the Branch Reporting Suite tool, with the aim
to leverage Post Office’s wider data investment plans to give Postmasters better
access to information that allows greater self-investigation into potential
discrepancies; adding Branch Hub onto the Horizon terminal, allowing all
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Postmasters easy access to the Branch Hub portal using current Horizon
infrastructure (i.e. instead of using their own devices); completing the rollout of
the least privileged model, resulting in Fujitsu having the minimum remote access
required to fulfil their service obligations; addressing recommendations around the
maturity of how Post Office manages certain Horizon scripting languages; and
selected improvements to the operation and interface of Horizon. Due to competing
resource pressures, the need to minimise the disruption on the network caused by
changes to Horizon, complexity of change and Post Office’s constrained investment
budget this phase does not include all possible or desirable actions that the
business could undertake. Therefore while Post Office does expect to be in a
conformant position in relation to the HIJ by the end of the current financial year,
management expect there will be a tail of incomplete activity at this time that
would otherwise strengthen the robustness of its disclosures to the Inquiry.
Data stewardship and data management activities that respond to certain aspects
of the HIJ issues are being funded outside the Horizon remediation work as this is
agnostic to a particular system enhancing POLs overall data maturity , subject to
sufficient funding being available, the data governance team will initiate a schedule
of activities to improve Post Office’s data infrastructure and rollout new ways to
manage and quality assure its data. This programme of complementary activities
will be delivered in concert, to make sure changes that are implemented can be
properly embedded in normal business operations. These activities may therefore
be delivered to a different timetable than the rest of the third phase of remediation.
Assurances Sought by Post Office in Relation to These Actions
In addition to oversight of the delivery of HIJ related actions by IDG, Post Office
has also commissioned two separate reviews from IA with the aim of validating
what has been delivered in the first two phases of remediation work. The second
report on the second phase was issued in June 2022 and had a rating of ‘needs
significant improvement’, in recognition of certain missed milestones and the
impact this slower than expected progress might have on Post Office being able to
demonstrate a position of substantive or sustained remediation to the Inquiry
across all HIJ issues. Notwithstanding, the report did corroborate what the Horizon
IT team had delivered in the second phase as well as the challenges faced, and it
also recognised progress since its first report. After the first phase, improvements
had been recommended in relation to programme governance which IA identified
had improved significantly including around deliverable tracking, progress
monitoring and management reporting.
Post Office is also seeking external assurance from NRF to validate what has been
delivered, and this will take place once phase three is complete. While this is
expected to endorse Post Office’s view that it is conformant against the HIJ, it is
also likely to pick up on the outstanding backlog of activities which Post Office has
not yet been able to action. An early draft report was prepared by NRF in Autumn
2021 and this was used to inform the final scope of the second phase.
Finally, as part of the third phase of remediation work, Post Office will be
commissioning an independent audit of Fujitsu specifically to cover remote and
privileged access and transaction integrity. This will be completed before the end
of 2022 and the business expects it will be an important submission into the Inquiry
given the central role this played in the Horizon Issues trial.
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Post Office’s Cultural Change Programme
Finally, we do absolutely recognise that we had systemic cultural issues at Post
Office and that we must change the way we work comprehensively so that the
issues as raised in the CIJ, can never happen again. Therefore, we have embarked
on an extensive culture transformation programme with the aim of ‘putting
Postmasters at the heart of the business’ as our business simply does not exist
without our Postmasters.
To drive this change Post Office has appointed a Director of Culture Change,
Communications and Engagement to develop and execute a programme of cultural
change led by the Group Executive (and the Senior Leadership Group) who are
committed to changing behaviours and promoting the right relationship with
Postmasters across the business. This responds to Justice Fraser’s criticisms
regarding Post Office’s legacy and perceived working practices which stated POL
had a culture of secrecy and excessive confidentiality, acting oppressively towards
Operators.
The cornerstone of POL’s transformation are the new ‘Ways of Working’ that will
align all Post Office to our behaviours of ‘working in partnership, as one team to
deliver’. They guide everything we do at POL and have been, and will be,
consistently and deeply embedded by connecting them to performance
conversations, talent acquisition, training programmes and the introduction of a
recognition programme.
As we believe that change must be owned by, and led from the top, all our Senior
Leadership and Group Executive members have been through the first phase of
our ‘Leading to Serve’ programme. It is now being extended more widely to include
our Regional and Area Managers so that they are role modelling the ways of
working and thus laying the foundation for lasting cultural change.
The business continues its activities with our colleagues to help foster
understanding and conviction for this cultural change. All our back office
Postmaster support teams have been through service mindset training, building
the key skills of listening and empathy. In addition, we have and are putting in
place several reinforcement mechanisms to embed the change including multiple
training programmes to develop talent.
To encourage empathy and understanding, all staff have participated in
Postmaster-oriented immersive learning activities. This includes the ‘A week in
the life of a Postmaster’ programme in 2021; detailed training on the Group
Litigation Order, to ensure consistent understanding of the judgements and
changes Post Office is implementing; and aligning all senior managers to branches
via the ‘Postmaster Connect’ initiative. This initiative aims to increase knowledge
of branch operations, day-to-day operational issues and frustrations Postmasters
face daily which in turn helps Post Office to identify ways to simplify and make
operational efficiencies. Post Office has also strengthened its approach to
whistleblowing and_ investigations, working with Protect, a leading UK
whistleblowing charity, such that if there are reported concerns these are
identified, triaged and investigated properly.
More formally, we have aligned all Postmaster facing teams under a single Group
Executive member to break down silos and ensure consistency of interactions. And
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through updated personal development plans and formal assessment
conversations our progress will be monitored.
We fully recognise that effecting real and lasting results will take time and our
initial cultural transformation initiative works towards a three-year roadmap with
solid measurement mechanisms, such as annual engagement surveys, in place to
check we are making the right progress with the right impact, emerging with an
aligned leadership and colleagues as advocates of our new culture.
Summary
Since the CIJ and HIJ Post Office has sought to take a structured approach to
responding to Justice Fraser’s findings and over the past eighteen months a
considerable amount of progress has been delivered. This progress has been or,
by the time formal submissions are made to the Inquiry, will have been assured
internally and externally, and where recommendations are put forward by IA or
independent external parties Post Office will respond to these. Most importantly as
Post Office has set itself high standards, to comply with the spirit and not just the
word of the two judgements, it is confident that it will be able to make
representations to the Inquiry that it has achieved substantial improvements to
the management of the Horizon system, as operated today. Giving Post Office and
our Postmasters a much higher level of confidence in the overall integrity of the
system.
Notwithstanding this Post Office does not expect to have completed all possible or
desirable actions in time for it making submissions to the Inquiry due to a number
of factors, including the complexity of the change required and the capacity of the
business to absorb this change, but also the funding required to deliver this and
the constraints imposed by other demands on Post Office’s constrained investment
budget. These actions would be expected to improve error repellancy and improve
Postmasters’ experience of using the system. It is possible that Post Office, and
BEIS as its shareholder, may come under criticism from Sir Wyn Williams because
of this.
Post Office also recognises that progress is never permanent, and it will therefore
need to continue to be alive to the CIJ and HIJ findings in the future to make sure
that the high standards delivered can be maintained. Part of this will be supported
by the improvements being made to Post Office’s culture, as well as in making sure
appropriate controls are designed, implemented, supported and sustained across
the organisation. But a critical part of this will also be enabled by NBIT and the
replacement of Horizon, and the enhanced role Post Office will have in developing,
operating and assuring this new system.
Yours sincerely,
GRO
Tim Parker
CHAIR POST OFFICE LIMITED
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