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DOCUMENT - 29
DRAFT- IN STRICTEST CONFIDENCE AND SUBJECT TO LEGAL PRIVILEGE
GLO COMMUNICATIONS — HORIZON ISSUES TRIAL
BRIEF FOR BRANCH SUPPORT CENTRE (NBSC ) AND IT HELPLINES — KIM ABBOTS/ TBC
MESSAGES TO BRANCH SUPPORT CENTRE AND IT HELPLINES TEAM
You'll have seen the communications today about a High Court Judgment in the Post
Office Group Litigation.
This Judgment, which focuses on our Horizon system, forms part of the preliminary
stages in this extremely complex litigation. It raises a number of issues [and
criticisms] which could cause concern.
Comprehensive communications are being across the business including of course to
everyone in our network. We have also issued a media statement which you can
find, together with further background information on our intranet [link]
We might receive questions about the Judgment and the litigation from postmasters.
If you need help with these you can refer them to [comms email] who will respond.
Operational questions should be handled in the normal way but do of course raise
any concerns you have.
It is important that we can reassure people about the overall robustness of Horizon
and that it compares well with systems used by other retail and financial services
companies each day. Both independent experts, for Post Office and the claimants in
the case, on opposite sides of the litigation, confirmed this.
Horizon processes around 47 million transactions a week, more than £60 billion
worth a year. These are reconciled every day, every, month, every year, with the
systems of major organisations including high street banks, utility companies and
Government departments, giving confidence in the many products and services we
provide.
Of course no system can ever be said to be perfect and as you know we’re working
hard on improvements. We’re working with Fujitsu on a comprehensive programme
of actions and overall more than [100?] changes are being made, closely involving
postmasters.
What the Judgment underlines [most/ very strongly] is that we must continue to do
better in the ways in which we support postmasters to run branches and our new
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ways of working, together with the many other actions being taken at all levels of
the business, are at the centre of this
If you want more information about all we’re doing you can find communications
about it here [ link to relevant stories]
If you have any concerns or queries please let me know straightaway and I will be
happy to help