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Message
From:
on behalf of
Sent:
To:
cc: Susan Crichton
Subject: RE: Summary of Receipts Payments problems - STRICTLY PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL - SUBJECT TO LEGAL PRIVILEGE
Attachments:Briefing Note re Second Sight Interim Report - 30 06 13 SJB.docx
Rod
Updated with my comments
Regard, Simon
From: Rodric Williams
Sent: 01 July 2013 13:42
To: Simon Baker
Subject: FW: Summary of Receipts Payments problems - STRICTLY PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL - SUBJECT TO LEGAL
PRIVILEGE
Hi Simon ~ both you and Lesley mentioned you had some comments on and corrections to the draft.
How did you want to get those to me?
Rodric
Rodric Williams [Litigation Lawyer
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From: Rodric Williams
Sent: 01 July 2013 02:07
To: Lesley J Sewell; Alwen Lyons; Hugh Flemington
Cc: Simon Baker; Gina Gould; Martin Edwards; Jarnail A Singh; Mark R Davies
Subject: RE: Summary of Receipts Payments problems - STRICTLY PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL - SUBJECT TO LEGAL
PRIVILEGE
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All,
Please find attached latest draft Briefing Note, which has sought to incorporate the feedback to date so far as I have
been able.
i have not amended the Annexes to the Note - the document is already quite long and will need an Exec Summary, and I
would like to discuss with Alwen and Mark how much detail we need to go into in the Annexes.
Please let me have any comments. I will continue to refine the document in the meantime.
Kind regards, Rodric
Rodric Williams I Litigation L
148
Street, LONDON, ECIV 9HQ
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From: Lesley J Sewell
Sent: 30 June 2013 18:06
To: Alwen Lyons; Rodric Williams; Hugh Flemington
Cc: Simon Baker; Gina Gould; Martin Edwards
Subject: RE: Summary of Receipts Payments problems
Rod
The following needs to be included in the brief for Paula and Alice.
At what point do you think both Alwen and I will have a revised draft fro review.
i know it may change after the SS meeting tomorrow but we can prepare all the factual context.
Thx
Lesley J Sew
Chief i
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From: Alwen Lyons
Sent: 30 June 2013 18:06
To: Lesley J Sewell
Cc: Simon Baker; Gina Gould; Martin Edwards
Subject: Re: Summary of Receipts Payments problems.
I think it will be easier for Paula if she gets one brief so this should be in it
Thanks
Alwen
Alwen Lyons
On 30 Jun 2013, at 17:13, "Lesley J Sewell
Alwen
Does this need to go to Paula or should it be included in Rods briefing, or even both?
Lesley J Sewell
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This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may
contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorised review,
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From: Simon Baker
Sent: 30 June 2013 13:58
To: Lesley J Sewell
Cc: Gina Gould; Alwen Lyons
Subject: RE: Summary of Receipts Payments problems
No problem to make this changes. Are you expecting me to forward this on to anyone NOW?
From: Lesley J Sewell
Sent: 29 June 2013 19:56
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To: Simon Baker; Alwen Lyons
Cc: Gina Gould
Subject: RE: Summary of Receipts Payments problems
Simon
A couple of comments:
Can we change the reference from Bug to fault.
DONE
Given what Andy has sent to us late Friday ~ were these branches disadvantaged ~ ie did they have to
put their own money in and if so for how long? From his summary it wasn’t clear to me.
YES THEY WERE DISADVANCED FOR THE AMOUNTS SHOWN IN THE TABLE. FOR APPROX 6 MONTHS
(WE HAVE TO BE APPROX BECAUSE DIFFERENCE SUBPOSTMASTERS EXPERIENCED THE BUG IN
DIFFERENT MONTHS.
And if they did have to put their own money in, at what point did we reimburse them and did we give
ther so sort of additional payment due to inconvenience.
WE REIMBURSED THEM IN MARCH 2011. I DON’T BELIEVE ANY PAYMENT WAS MADE FOR
INCONVENIENCE (WE ARE TALKING ABOUT £115 AS THE WORST CASE)
Thx
Gina: Can you print a copy for my SS file. Thx
Lesley J Sewell
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contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorised review,
use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended
recipient please contact me by reply email and destroy all copies of the
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From: Simon Baker
Sent: 28 June 2013 17:36
To: Lesley J Sewell; Alwen Lyons
Cc: Simon Baker
Subject: Summary of Receipts Payments problems
Timeline
March 2010 First incidence occurred
Aug-Oct 2010 Bulk of incidents occurred
October 2010 Issue Fixed
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March 2011 Letters sent to branches and corrections made
Problem Description
e The problem occurs as part of the process of moving Discrepancies into Local Suspense.
e There was a defect, introduced as part of HNG, that in certain circumstances meant that
discrepancies were not properly cleared to Local Suspense.
e This means that the gain or loss remained, unresolved, within the discrepancy account.
If the sub postmaster did not look at their Final Balance Report carefully, they would have been
unaware of this issue.
The impact would have been that in order to balance, sub postmasters would have to either put
their own money in (a disadvantage to the sub postmaster) or taken money out (an advantage
to the sub postmaster)
e This problem was automatically picked up by the system, which had been designed to flag up
these type of discrepancies
Impact to sub postmasters
In total 62 branches were impacted
® Out of these 17 were sub postmaster branches (not crowns or multiples) who were
disadvantaged
¢ The amount they were disadvantaged by is shown below
e The losses were made good by Post Office in March 2011. These means that most of the Sub
Postmasters below would have held the loss on average for 6 months.
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Why did it take so long to resolve?
e Priority and distinction from other service issues that were happening at the time of the HNG
rollout
e Complexity of understanding the root cause
e Getting agreement and clarity on how best to communicate this to branches
Simon Baker Head of Business Change and Assu
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