POL00070455
POL00070455
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Stephen Dilley
From: Bob Heckford
Sent: 28 November 2005 09:43
To: Stephen Dilley; Tom Beezer
Ce: Julian Summerhayes
Subject: RE: Castleton - Disclosure
Is this request for ‘similar fact evidence’ something that is allowed in civil matters?
From: Stephen Dilley
Sent: 24 November 2005 17:47
To: Tom Beezer
Cc: Bob Heckford; Julian Summerhayes
Subject: Castleton - Disclosure
Dear Tom,
You will recall that one of the questions Mr Castleton's solicitors have raised is that we should
give them wider disclosure of all Horizon related problems at the P.O, details of the claims
made involving shortfalls and the Horizon system and the outcome of those claims. This is
because they state that there are endemic problems with Horizon.
quest. At Mandy's suggestion I have spoken with David Hulbert of
‘0 ascertain how easy it would be to get this sort of info. He
Horizon helplines:
This seem:
the P.O ¢.
confirmed
1. Horizon Service Helpline (I.e Fujitsu services) which receives 12,000 to 15,000 calls per
month. This is for technical problems with Horizon.
2. Network Business Support Centre (part of the P.O) which receives 20,000 calls per week.
This is for matters such as accounts discrepancies.
Call are not logged by category, so someone would manually have to go through the records of
every single call logged to tell whether it concerned a Horizon based problem. Dave Hulbert
estimated a junior manager would have to do this and it would take them 3 to 4 weeks to go
through 3 to 4 months worth of call logs and this would cost the P.O approximately £2,000 to
£3,000. Obviously the time and cost are increased if more than 3 to 4 months worth of
information is needed.
This is useful information and something I think you could share with Mandy tomorrow. I would
prefer not to share this with Mr Castleton's solicitors now because there are more relevant
issues that I want the parties to focus on. However, if Mr Castleton's solicitors press for the
disclosure of this broad category of information, the above figures may help us to show that it
would be unreasonable to produce search for it and therefore it need not be disclosed.
Kind regards.
Stephen Dilley
Solicitor
bel
alf of Bond Peat
30/11/2005