POL00147109
POL00147109
Belinda Crowe cc: Chris Aujard
Programme Director Hugh Flemington
Initial Complaint and Mediation Scheme Angela Van Den Bogerd
David Oliver
06/01/2014
Paula Vennells
BRIEFING FOR YOUR 1 — 2- 1 WITH ALICE
Summary
This note sets out the current performance and administration of the scheme and the steps that are
being put in place to manage and improve this.
Performance
¢ The scheme has received 147 applications.
e Of these we have received detailed responses from 27.
© Weare investigating 19 and are aiming to complete 19 Post Office investigations by the end
of January.
«Three cases are currently with Second Sight with the first two due to be ready for review on
24 January.
* Six cases are concluded — four not eligible and two withdrawn following discussions with
Post Office.
© We expect the first case to reach mediation by early March (24 weeks from end to end).
Timescales
Cases are moving more slowly through the system than was expected when the scheme was
established. In part this is due to the need to refine processes and learn lessons from the early
cases, a point that the Sir Tony Hooper stressed the importance of at the working group on 3
January.
We are still confident that we will have completed the majority of the Post Office investigations in
Quarter 2, but it is not clear what proportion of cases will have cleared mediation by this point.
There are two current issues:
1) Second Sight capacity is becoming more worrying, we have taken steps to minimise the
burden on them by taking on the administration of the scheme and encouraging them to
make their reports on each case as focussed and concise as possible (with a common generic
report).
2) Over 30 applicants have taken on the same firm of professional advisors — Howe and Co. It
appears that Howe and Co are struggling to deliver and we have escalated this issue to Chris
Aujard who is writing to them and following up with a call.
We are keeping the progress of the cases under constant review and it will become much clearer
once the first 10 cases reach mediation what the timelines will be.
POL00147109
POL00147109
Administration of the Scheme
We have now taken on the administration of the scheme from Second Sight and have instituted
more rigorous monitoring and proactive chasing of deadlines. This ownership should help ensure
that all cases move as quickly as possible through the scheme. The review of administration has
highlighted some areas where we need to improve our record keeping and we are taking steps to
address this now.
Report Quality
Report quality will be a key determinate in the success of the mediation and we have taken a
number of steps to address this:
© Bond Dickinson have produced a model report based on one of the first cases submitted by
the POL investigators.
* Allinvestigators have attended a training day to understand the scheme and received
training from Bond Dickinson on report writing.
© The programme team have put in place a quality assurance process to review all reports
before they go to lawyers.
Mediation will be a challenge with the first case less than two months away. We have now agreed
the high level process for moving a report from Second Sight via the Working Group into mediation
but there is still more to do to refine the detail. The Working Group is keen to keep this under
review as we test it with the first cases and the Chair is particularly keen to approach this area
cautiously.
We are in the process of recruiting Post Office representatives for the mediation process.
Successfully recruiting the right calibre of staff and securing their release for both training and
mediation will be crucial for the programme.
Other Issues
There are two other areas where it might be useful to update Alice. Firstly Hugh is making good
progress on the paper on our approach to Prosecutions which will shortly be going to ExCo and then
the Board . Secondly we have agreed with Sir Tony Hooper a method for providing reassurance
around the handling of the five current live criminal investigations where their admission to the
scheme is paused.
Next Steps
We are currently working on a number of areas to take to the first Programme Board (17 January).
In particular the Programme Board will review the first draft of an early settlement policy prior to its
submission to ExCo. The early settlement policy could potentially have a substantive impact on the
speed of moving cases through the Scheme so the earlier it is in place the better.
Belinda Crowe