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Mr NormanILamb MP
Minister forIPostal Affairs
Department for Business, Innovation
1 Victoria Street
LONDON
SW1H OET
25" February 2012
Dear Mr Lanjb
Tam writingjto you on behalf of the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance GIFSA), as I did with
the former Minister for Postal Affairs during May 2010. -
On that and subsequent occasions, I wrote to draw his attention to the plight of
subpostmasters at the hands of Post Office Limited. The reference number 213102 was given
to the correspondence and it will Provide an outline of our concerns. During November 2010 1
met with him at his office to raise
and distress ih the subpostmaster
a number of points with Post Office Management and he seems to have taken them at their
word.
I write to youlon this occasion to r
As you will see from the Previous correspondence, solicitors are Now acting on behalf of a
number of victims of Post Office Li
more subpostmasters will suffer. Whilst JFSA very much reflects the views of those who have
fallen victim to the failures of the Post Office Limited Horizon system, I want to draw your
attention to the enclosed survey which has just taken place. As you will see, it has been
completed by serving subpostmasters, with their anonymity ensured to safeguard them from
Post Office reprisals, I am sure yot
assurances given by Post Office Limited to your predecessor and no doubt to yourself if you
were to raise our concerns with them.
Previously we pffered to work with
scandal, and Iinow extend that offer to you, In the meantime should you require any further
information, plbase do-not hesitate to ask,
T look forward to meeting with you
Chairman, Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance
MAW Oh Go. ers
I
i
gr
kills
many of the issues which have been causing devastation
community. Following the meeting I understand he queried
‘equest a meeting to discuss this matter further with you,
imited, but the law moves slowly and in the meantime many
U will find the results disturbing and in total conflict with the
your department to assist with uncovering this major
in the near future,
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Subpostmaster Survey
Post Office Limited has continually refused to acknowledge that any problems
subpostmasters have experienced have ever been the fault of the POL Horizon
computer system. Furthermore POL has refused to allow access to or answer
questions about the accuracy of the system to substantiate their claim. So
during February 2012, a short survey was undertaken of serving
subpostmasters in order to gauge the extent of the losses from Post Office
Limited’s Horizon system.
The survey’s existence was made known through a closed forum for
subpostrmasters and remained online for 8 days. To encourage frank and
honest ahswers from a cross section of subpostmasters, no information was
requested that would identify those responding.
The survey used the free online version of SurveyMonkey, which only allows
for 100 responses but does not include any analysis tools. The information
submitted! from all the responses was entered into an Excel spreadsheet which
was thenIused to generate the results. The majority of the survey forms were
fully completed, but occasionally a person did not complete every question. In
such instances the dataset was amended to reflect the actual number of
responses to that question.
The answers provided made it Possible to establish how wide ranging the
extent of the annual losses from the Horizon system probably are, as well as
suggesting what is the order of cost to each subpostmaster. Of particular
concern is the response to the first question, which has provided a revelation
as to just how serious the problem really is, and how well POL is managing to
hide the facts from being known.
SPMR Survey! SFSA February 2012 Page 1 of 10
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Survey Results
Q- Dolyou have regular balance shortages that you have to put
money in to address?
Had.
Losses
77% No Losses.
23%
When this information is combined with the answer to:-
Q.- If YES, what have you had to add over the last 12 months?
it suggests that the average office loss during the last 12 months was in the
region of £1200.
Therefore to estimate the income gained by Horizon through system declared
losses, the following formula can be applied:-
number of offices using Horizon X 1200 X 0.77
Furthermore, this calculation can offer a total amount gained from Horizon
declared Josses since its inception by replacing each of the years’ number of
offices using Horizon, with the appropriate number since the initial launch of
the system to 18,000 offices.
Then by using the declared Average size of losses during
stated logs figures it was the last 12 months
found that the majority of e1000- Over
losses were up to £500, but £5000 £5000
over a third of offices had 26% 8%
suffered Ipsses in the £000’s °0
during thé past 12 months. er “0-£500
SPMR Survey JFSA February 2012 Page 2 of 10
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To ascertain as to whether there was any obvious trend in the way these
losses
ere occurring due to the way an office Operated, the following
question.was asked:-
Q-Do
you use individual till balancing or office balancing?
The ‘Office’ balancing is often perceived as being the easier to operate, as
the stock is generally pooled, but it is thought to be more susceptible to
error because of the pooling. This was clearly the most common balance in
use,
Type of Balance Used
Individual
19%
Office
81%,
Yet when comparing the offices by type of balance, with those offices that
have stated losses during the last 12 months, this was not found to be the
case.
Office’ Balance during ‘individual’ Unit Balance
the last 12 months
Losses
Losses Losses
100%
So by applying the results of these losses by type, to the question:
Q- How)many serving positions does your office have?
It became clear that of those undertaking ‘Individual’ balances and stating that
they had suffered losses during the last 12 months, 50% were single terminal
offices.
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What does this survey really show?
Just from this random sampie it is abundanily clear that the majority of
subpostoffices using Horizon are suffering losses, Problems with Horizon are
not thejexception, they are the norm.
Could these problems be due to lack of operator skill?
The experience of operating Horizon ‘at the front end’ is in abundance as the
responsk to the following question showed.
Q- How many years have you been using Horizon?
Years experience of using Horizon
40% 60%
Have been On average
using Horizon have used
el : Horizon for 6
wi rst
ears
introduced *
By asking a further question of those who had used other methods before
Horizon was installed, the result is a damning indictment of a system meant to
improve @ business. No truly commercial business would find such results
acceptable, but Horizon being a government IT project has gone the way of so
many others i.e. costing billions and not fit for purpose.
Q- If you were a serving postmaster before Horizon, have balancing
problenis become more problematic since Horizon or has Horizon
made balancing simpler and more accurate? ©
Use of Horizon
More
Problematic Simpler
61%. 39%
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Postmaster’s Comments
FurtherIto the survey, a box was added that would afford any of those who had
experience prior to Horizon, the Opportunity to add a short comment. A
number did, and all of those comments are included below.
For information, contained within these comments are references to HOL
which stands or Horizon Online, the latest version of Horizon rolled out over
the last 18 months. The ‘Richard Jackson’ comment refers to a trade name of a
standalone pc software package that subpostmasters could buy privately to
produce POL balance returns prior to Horizon. Another similar product from
that period was known as Capture, and POL would accept documentation from
either of these systems.
“You would think that over the years, as you get more experienced,
when only you and your wife operate the counters, that more often
than not you would balance to a few pence ona daily basis. This
NEVER happens. What we need to have is a forensic audit - with
CCTV recordings of all transactions, HOL screens and payment and
change. Over a day, ona multiple counter system, run by a
professipnal audit team. Happy to eat my hat if they don't find
anything untoward.”
“Horizon lacks accounting reports”
“Although I haven't had regular problems I have an instance (of
which I have full documentation ) where Horizon ‘lost' several
postage transactions, all were either RSF or Intl SF and horizon
printed labels and individual proof of posting but did not add them
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into the overall total. Only picked up when ISF's didn't show on the
Priority items postage printout.”
“We haven't had any noticeable problems since the arrival of Horizon
Online\but under the old Horizon system we experienced problems
whereby we would often encounter £100 shortages. I was able to rule
out staff dishonesty as this was a problem that occurred on more
than one occasion on days when Staff were absent or on holiday. We
also had two occasions where there were £1,000 gains that have
never Been explained. Fortunately for us the two £1,000 gains
probably covered the many £100 shortages. As with any computer
systemII believe that Horizon is NOT infallible as POL tend to suggest,
nor is it particularly robust as has been demonstrated by the more
recent outages.”
“tts quicker, but not more accurate.”
“I cannat honestly say whether my regular smallish shortages are due
to a technical/accounting error within Horizon or the design of
Horizon\making it too easy for user errors to be made without logical
warnings at the time of entry or being able to trace them
afterwatds.”
“I've had Horizon ever since being here but went to HOL in July 2010
and ever since had unexplained losses. Could it just be me? Maybe.
Could it be HOL? Maybe. Can it be proved that there's problems with
SPMR Survey JFSA February 2012 Page 6 of 10
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HOL? Probably not. Once again, we seem to bear the brunt of
issues.\....”
“I have not had problems personally with Horizon so far.”
“Assuming we are talking about Horizon Online, then the balance
procedure is more efficient and quicker. The differences that other
Postmasters seem to have could be attributed to their lack of
understanding of the system. The Helpdesk has, in my experience,
always\been helpful. Perhaps it's the way people ask the
questions!!!”
“I have argued and stated the system has a problem. All I get is if i
don't pay the short fall they will take it from my remuneration. Which
they have on several occasions. I have incident that showed the
system equipment to faulty and kept all the relevant information. My
base unit was changed and shown to be faulty and yet they still
charged me approx £1000 which 1 refused to pay and it was removed
from my remuneration. I still have everything relating to this and the
ref No fiom POL if it is any help.”
“I have serious doubts about the accuracy of the system. My staff feel
the same way. Overnight and over weekend changes seem to occur. I
hate theIway in which the Paystation accounting works - you never
know where you are and there is no way of checking what has gone
through.”
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“Cancellations/reversals procedure far too difficult and irregular as is
the totalling procedure therefore difficult to keep track of the way the
system is working and to have confidence in the end result.”
“Since becoming a SPMR in 1995 POL's policy from a manual balance
to an electronic balancing format has deteriorated. There is little to
no controls when losses occur for the SPMR to investigate and even
when rio material loss is established POL stiff charge the SPMR for
what they allege is a loss.”
“I find that balancing is quicker and on the whole accurate but what I
don't like is that during the week a shortage occurs which cannot be
explained but can disappear when balancing on Wednesday. The
access of daily transactions doesn't allow you to look over everything
that yoy do every day.”
“Used both Richard Jackson and the POL version to balance pre-
horizon. Both software packages allowed you to 'see' where any
errors were and make the necessary adjustments. Any adjustments
made were carried through to a new balance figure so the effect of
any adjustment was immediately available. You had control of the
whole process unlike Horizon which largely functions as a Black Box.
You do-get used to Horizon but are never in control.”
“Horizonlis a strange system as there appears to be no way that you
can find errors for missing amounts of cash. I have tried to do cash
declarations on an hourly basis and try to balance this against
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transactions but this has proved to be a difficult exercise. I truly
believe that there is a fundamental problem with Horizon.”
“Balancing is quicker, but if there is a problem there is very little you
can do\about it because of lack of evidence in paper form or on the
system itself. It seems worrying that the transaction log facility only
enables you to track transactions that have taken place in the last
two months. I recently had a query from a customer about a
transaction done in November 2011 and the system would not allow
me to go that far back.”
“Started in 1995. Couldn't believe the archaic ‘big books’, got Capture
and never regretted it, we like Horizon but cannot understand it and
think same more training is warranted. And pigs might fly!”
“Get me out of this insanity.”
“The situation has gone so serious since HOL introduction with losses
escalating that I am now selling up hoping to escape before
bankrupted by POL.”
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In Contlusion
Whatever is the cause of all the problems with Horizon, whether it is the bugs
in the system, the lack of training and support, the failure of management to
be able to deal with these issues, the unwillingness of government to face its
responsibilities or a combination of all. There is little doubt that at some level
POL is fully aware of the extent of the issue, yet has taken the decision to stand
firmly behind their continual deniat that a single problem has ever occurred
with Horizon.
If nothing else, this snapshot survey has highlighted the need for others to
seriously question the standard one line response from POL that ‘Horizon is
robust’, IIt has to be asked why POL or government has never ever
commissioned an independent survey of subpostmasters’ views of Horizon
after all these years of the system in operation. Jt could be conducted with
anonymity assured by an external organization, and if POL are so convinced
about the ‘robustness’, be used to support their claims.
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