POL00054712
POL00054712
amsphere
Mr. Charles McLachlan
Director
Amsphere Consulting Ltd
90 Fenchurch Street
London EC3M 4BY
Mts. Issy Hogg
Coomber Rich Solicitors
Yard House
Basingstoke
RG21 7NX
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Dear Issy,
Re: Seema Misra
As agreed, I am summarising progress to date in relation to the investigation of the Horizon
transactions provided by Fujitsu for West Byfleet.
Ihave:
* Established a mechanism for converting the Excel spreadsheets into an appropriate set
of formats for loading into an Access database
© Reviewed the various product codes, the structure of the spreadsheets and conducted a
walk through of the spreadsheets with Gareth Jenkins (Fujitsu) in teleconference.
Conducted some simple high level consistency tests.
* Made a preliminary investigation into the hypotheses discussed in my earlier reports.
¢ Failed to identify any indicators of problems in the Horizon transactions at this
preliminary stage.
.
Thave discussed my preliminary progress with Gareth Jenkins (Fujitsu) and he agrees that:
¢ Examination of the Horizon transactions will not determine whether discrepancies
arise from operator error due to poor training, lack of understanding of the operation
of the system and lack of support from regional managers and the BSC or dishonesty.
* Certain system conditions in the post office counter system (in particular resetting of
the touch screen and the failure to print a readable receipt because of ink or cylinder
problems) are not recorded in the transactions that are available from Fujitsu.
© Some of the Horizon transactions shown from Fujitsu, in particular many of those in
terminal modes that are not ‘SC’ i.e. Serve Customer, depend on information held
outside the Horizon system at the systems operated by the Post Office Product Branch
Accounting function at the Business Support Centre (BSC) at Chesterfield. For
example the reconciliation of EPOS transactions and bill payment transactions at the
BSC will give rise to requests for the Sub Postmaster to accept adjustments to
transactions in the Horizon system.
© Itis not possible to investigate these transactions without reviewing the corresponding
activities at the Business Support Centre both from a systems and operations point of
view. For example, it is feasible that when a discrepancy is identified by the staff at
the Business Support Centre, the operational procedure or system suggests that
Charles WicLachian = Contidentia™ emer erasers) ZOU AMISBRGFE
Page 1 of 2
amsphere
reconciliation can be achieved by adjustment to the Horizon branch transactions while
in fact the issue resides elsewhere.
* The systems operated at the Business Support Centre at Chesterfield were only
brought to my attention for the first time at the time of our conversation on 12!
February 2010.
These issues are discussed more fully in my 4" interim technical expert’s report of 12"
February 2010.
In the light of the above, I await your further instructions before continuing with my
investigation of the Horizon transaction data.
Yours sincerely
Professor Charles McLachlan
Contidentiar
emer Z0TU AMSpREFE
Page 2 of 2
POL00054712
POL00054712