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Sent: Wed 04/11/2015 6:51:56 PM (UTC)
To: Patrick Bourkel___
Williams.
Underwood:
Subject: FW: Computer Weekly
fyi
Jane MacLeod
General Counsel
Ground Floor
20 Finsbury Street
LONDON
EC2Y 9AQ
Mobile numberi..
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark R Davies
Sent: 04 November 2015 18:35
To: Paula Vennells
Ce: Jane MacLeod; Neil Hayward: Chris Broe
Subject: Re: Computer Weekly
Hi Paula
Apologies for the delay on this one.
CWU postmasters has written a circular urging their members to take care due to evidence they claim to have of duplicate
transactions.
The team have looked into the issue raised:
- the CWU appear to be inaccurately describing a situation that can occur when the Horizon user does not correctly log off
- any resulting error would be transparent to the postmaster, and included in the Horizon event and transaction logs
- it is NOT a random, intermittent error as suggested by CWU - it is a process error rather than a technical 'fault’ (nevertheless FJ
will be implementing a solution to avoid by 2016)
- it is correctable via transaction correction and reconciliation processes
What this appears to be about is a known situation where a user forces a log off in a particular situation and there is resulting
duplication of a 'remming in’.
I suspect that this is the "revelation" which Tim McCormack , a regular and aggressive correspondent to you and others, has been
referring to recently on Twitter.
Our response is:
"The Post Office has robust back-office reconciliation processes to identify and correct misbalances.
"Processes are also in place to address issues when they arise and we have not seen any evidence of system errors or failure in our
processes.
"The Post Office provides extensive support, including visits to branches, if postmasters need advice about branch accounting or
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other aspects of running their branch and we encourage them to contact us if they have any concerns.
"It remains the case that more than three years of investigations have not identified any transaction caused by a technical fault in
Horizon which resulted in a postmaster wrongly being held responsible for a loss."
We will continue to monitor this.
Mark
Mark Davies
Communi
Mobile:
Corporate Affairs Director Post Office Lid
GRO.
From my iPhone and therefore possibly in transit so please forgive spelling mistakes or brevity!
>On 4 Nov 2015, at 08:55, Paula Vennells ¢~
5 -
> Thanks Mark - really appreciate you letting me know.
>
> What's the issue or cause for why now?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On 4 Nov 2015, at 08:45, Mark R Davies
>>
>> Paula
>>
>> The CWU postmasters are stoking up Horizon (as we have expected they would). They've issued a note to their members about
alleged issue with Horizon - clearly an attempt to create some noise. The team are working on the question raised as we've had a call
from Computer Weekly. I may have to duck out of POAC for a while this morning.
>>
>> I will update you.
>
>> Mark
>>
>
>> Mark Davies
>> Commu
rporate Affairs Director Post Office Ltd
>> From my iPhone and therefore possibly in transit so please forgive spelling mistakes or brevity!