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Monthly Monitoring Meeting Readout
01 February 2024
Attendees
¢ Carl Creswell (CC) — Director, Business Resilience, DBT
e Simon Recaldin (SR) — Director, Remediation Unit, POL
Post Office
© Andrew Mortimer (AM)
Catherine Connolly (CCo)
David Firth (DF)
Evelyn Hocking (EH)
Jamie Tebbutt (JT)
Ken Kyriacou (KK)
Madeleine Dematteis (MD)
Matthew Hilton (MH)
Neil Daveyl (ND)
Neil McDaid (NM)
Nicola Munden (NMu)
Paul Murray (PM)
Richard Paddington (RP)
Sarah Lambert (SL)
Steve Barlow (SB)
Susan Samachan (SS)
Olha Ellis (OE)
Victor Turner (VT
DBT
Beth White (BW)
Eleri Wones (EW)
Emily Snow (ES)
Harry Fallowfield (HF)
Foysul Hoque (FH)
Paul Harding (PH)
Richard Howard (RH)
oc
1. Parliamentary Bill
Beth White (BW) updated the group on bringing forward a Bill to overturn convictions. The
team is working closely with Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Devolved Administrations (DA) on
the scope of the legislation to ensure the right cohort is captured. This will be followed by
consultation with the judiciary and parliamentarians. The main challenge is addressing the
unprecedented legislation which presents challenges for the judiciary. Following policy
development, the Bill will be brought forward and progressed through both Houses as
quickly as possible. A clear timeline of when the Bill is expected to be introduced is
currently being determined.
2. MoJ data request
Nicola Munden (NMu) said POL have shared a draft data sharing agreement with MoJ and
DBT who are expected to provide comments by 1° February. POL have fairly rich data that
can be shared with MoJ and DBT. Some of the data is not as comprehensive as the cases
go too far back or relate to other jurisdictions and prosecutors. The accuracy of the data will
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also come with caveats but POL feel the information will be sufficient to give DBT an idea
of the cohort to consider within the legislation.
3. Independent Assessor (IA) progress
Simon Recaldin (SR) said Sir Gary is keen to get on with the role. Neil McDaid (NM) said Sir
Gary is engaging with the Advisory Board (AB) separately. Sir Gary’s position and decisions
may provide more assurance to claimant representatives as a properly independent party
who can help to support the presentation of offers. POL is hopeful that this will allow claims
to be settled more swiftly. POL has shared a summary of current case statuses with Sir
Gary and a more detailed summary of where the active pecuniary claims currently stand
with the claimant representatives. Once the claimant representatives have had an
opportunity to feed back on the detailed version, it will also be shared with Sir Gary.
Offering an interim or top-up payment to the total value of £450k at the point when the
pecuniary claim is submitted will help remove another barrier and speed up settlements.
NM stressed the importance of resolving the legal fees issue which may cause delays if not
addressed quickly.
4. Progress on claims
NM said POL are making offers for determination or will refer them to Sir Gary to resolve
any disputes. Since 30" November 2023 the net sum that has gone out in cash is £11.1m;
this is primarily due to the Upfront Offer. More funds are going to claimants due to hardship
payments and further interim payment top-ups. Hudgells said more pecuniary claims will be
submitted.
Carl Creswell (CC) thanked POL for all their hard work with the Upfront Offer and general
progress on getting more money out to the claimants.
NM expressed concerns over possible future resource pressures due to the uncertainty
over where the compensation delivery will sit. NM also expressed that the many of the POL
OC compensation delivery team are new to POL and joined to correct the wrongs of the
past. CC sympathised with the delivery team’s feelings. CC said we are expecting more
claims to come through and continuing to settle them as quickly as possible is part of
addressing these wrongs. CC added that following the Bill, regardless of who is delivering
the new project for compensating those postmasters whose convictions are overturned,
DBT will require continued support from POL (e.g. on disclosure) to enable offers to be
made to that cohort. CC encouraged POL to continue focussing on progressing the in-flight
claims from the current court overturns.
5. Restorative Justice
NM said one of the public interest claimants has asked for a restorative justice meeting with
SR. POL wanted DBT to be aware of the approach of the meeting. SR said they made the
offer for the meeting and plan to go ahead with it.
HSS
6. HSS and Late Applications Update
CCo ran though the latest dashboard which shows that as of 31/01/24 a total of 763 late
applications have been received with a handful coming in that morning. Of the 763, 376 are
eligible, 59 ineligible and 326 are yet to be assessed.
346 late applications have been received since 1/1/24, of which 24 are eligible, 5 are
ineligible and 317 are yet to be assessed.
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CCo explained that more resource has been put in to keep on top and clear the back log
and it was noted that POL is looking into whether there has been a % change in those
ineligible and will update DBT.
POL will soon send out a mailing to all former SPMs which is expected to result in a further
increase in claims. Looking ahead POL are anticipating cumulative total of 1,000 late
applications by end of March and 1,500 by end of September. HMC are aware of this and
are updating forecasts accordingly.
When asked about average wait between application and offer CCo explained that has
fallen from 81 weeks to 30 weeks now that late applications are being processed. POL
have identified that there is a short-term risk that this will slip, should late applications
continue at their current level.
The MMM discussed whether a £75k offer should be made to HSS claimants and what it
would mean for the DRP. HMG is assessing this option. POL currently looking at the
analytics, but SR said that given the deliberate alignment between the GLO and HSS
schemes, the initiative inevitably needed to be included in HSS and confirmed that HUG
would need to fund it. POL are taking a paper to RC imminently on ways to speed up
compensation.
The £75k offer could impact 184 of the 348 claims currently in dispute.
7. Appeals
CCo explained that there have been 70 requests to reopen HSS cases, these will be
assessed however it was noted that there is limited availability of the panel.
The MMM were told that DBT has started to receive correspondence regarding potential
appeals too. DBT’s position is to explain that cases are settled. This aligns with what POL
are informing potential appellants.
POL stated that DBT need to be aware that not everyone had full guidelines (inc legal)
when originally claiming. There are currently no timescales with regards to appeals.
CC advised that DBT were minded to see how the £75k initiative washed through, how
many cases this resolved before further consideration of an appeals process.
SR responded by reminding CC that this went directly against POL’s and the AB’s
recommendation currently with the Minister who had mentioned his consideration in the
House of Commons. It also did not consider that an appeals process would address a
number of other issues which had been and will be raised at the Inquiry.
CC recognised SR’s points and pointed out additional concern about the potential costs of
establishing such an appeals process.
8. Tax Top Ups
POL informed the MMM that all compensation tax tops up settlements relating to 2022/23
tax year were sent out in advance of 31/01/24. Payments follow a few weeks later and all
payments should be issued by mid-March.