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Message
From: Peter Prior-Mill:
Sent: 27/01/2015 19:59:31
To: Angela Van-Den-Bogerd!
Subject: RE: Our Ref: ECT 1153/14 - New Year
Attachments: image001.png; image002.jpg; image003.jpg; image004.png; image005.png; image006.png; image007.png;
image008.png
Hi Angela,
In response to your points:
Al —No this could not happen if no label was inserted, that possibility is covered by the paragraph above (an error
message would result). The system would only think it had printed a label if something was in the printer for the printer to
apply ink to (ideally a label, but of course anything it could feed including blank paper would produce the same result).
A2 - Ifa label was printed but for some reason was illegible, the branch could determine from the basket what the label
type was, and NBSC ought to be able to give the relevant codes to spoil that label (if they did not have the codes to hand
they could obtain them from the Mails team). The evidence of what had been printed would remain in the Horizon
transaction record, it could not just disappear. I would also stress that the only method by which I can conceive of this
situation arising is if the clerk had put an already printed label back into the printer for the next print, highly unlikely but
not entirely impossible.
Regards,
Peter Prior-Mills I Lean Consultant / Business Analyst
Change Management
J
From: Angela Van-Den-Bogerd
Sent: 27 January 2015 19:26
To: Peter Prior-Mills
Subject: RE: Our Ref: ECT 1153/14 - New Year Update - This has now got quite serious
Peter,
Thanks for this. Would you please respond to me comments on the attached?
Thanks
Angela
From: Peter Prior-Mills
Sent: 27 January 2015 18:19
To: Angela Van-Den-Bogerd
Subject: RE: Our Ref: ECT 1153/14 - New Year Update - This has now got quite serious
Hi Angela,
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Good news, the attached report came in today from Fujitsu following our enquiries around the label print/fail issue.
In essence, the process cannot fail to print without either logging the fail event or giving an opportunity to the clerk to
recover and re-try. The only way they can end up with a charge in the basket is if the printer has printed onto something,
and they have answered “yes” to the question of whether the print was OK.
It’s a bit long winded, but Gareth has gone through and tested all scenarios to make sure of what happens. This should put
us on solid ground to refute the suggestion of ghost labels entering the basket, etc.
Regards,
Peter Prior-Mills I Lean Consultant / Business Analyst
Change Management
J
From: Angela Van-Den-Bogerd
Sent: 24 January 2015 21:26
To: Peter Prior-Mills
Subject: RE: Our Ref: ECT 1153/14 - New Year Update - This has now got quite serious
Hi Peter,
Mr McCormack is not a lawyer (well not to my knowledge anyway) but is a former Spmr. As a Spmr I believe he was
quite vocal and submitted written evidence to the select committee evidence session on NT a couple of years ago.
lappreciate your help with this.
Angela
Angela Van Den Bogerd I Head of Partnerships
Ty Brwydran House, Atlantic Close, SWANSEA SA7 9FJ
. A
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From: Peter Prior-Mills
Sent: 23 January 2015 19:39
To: Angela Van-Den-Bogerd
Subject: RE: Our Ref: ECT 1153/14 - New Year Update - This has now got quite serious
Hi Angela,
Ihave asked a number of detailed questions of Pete Newsome in Fujitsu around this issue (I will send you a copy of the
email separately), he will come back to me as quickly as possible by email and I will deal with this and communicate by
email each evening next week.
I take it the chap writing is a lawyer. He seems to think he has “proved” the existence of a system error causing
overprinting of labels, I don’t see the evidence for this, in particular:
1. He has provided no copy of a photograph showing the overprinted labels
2. He has failed to state the date and time of a recorded incident, nor the value and type of postage label purportedly
printed
3. He may be unaware that the printer is fed a blank label manually by the operator, so to overprint a label the
operator would have to insert an already printed label — that is operator error
I notice he also implies an “intermittent fault” concerning bulk label printing and demands that we suspend this facility
whilst it is investigated. This presumably is the old lawyers ploy whereby, once we suspend the facility he can say “see, I
told you there was a problem, that’s why you’ve suspended the bulk printing”. I take it he has also failed to provide a
verifiable time and branch where this phenomenon is supposed to have occurred?
The nature of Horizon and its transactions would suggest that any fault would be consistently present, to reproduce it we
need the specific details of how and where and when it happened in order to investigate. I can see that you have obviously
asked him for these details before but they have not been provided, unless he provides specifics this looks like it is
descending into a dialogue of the deaf.
Regards,
Peter Prior-Mills I Lean Consultant / Business Analyst
Change Management
PO Box 634, Chichester, PO19 9HJ
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From: Angela Van-Den-Bogerd
Sent: 23 January 2015 17:19
To: Peter Prior-Mills
Subject: FW: Our Ref: ECT 1153/14 - New Year Update - This has now got quite serious
Peter,
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Would you do me a favour please and have a look at the latest e-mail from Mr McCormack. I have annotated in red my
early thoughts but would appreciate you view on these and the other points raised. I will naturally need to take legal
advice before I respond.
Thanks,
Angela
Angela Van Den Bogerd I Head of Partnerships
Ty Brwydran House, Atlantic Close, SWANSEA SA7 9FJ
. 4
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From: Avene O'Farrell
Sent: 23 January 2015 16:29
To: Angela Van-Den-Bogerd; Chris Aujard; Mark R Davies; ECT; flagcaseadvisor; Tom Wechsler; Patrick Bourke
Subject: FW: Our Ref: ECT 1153/14 - New Year Update - This has now got quite serious
Hi,
Please see below, copying all so everyone is aware.
Thanks,
Avene
Avene O’Farrell I Executive Assistant to Paula Vennells, Chief Executive
148 Old Street, London, EC1V 9HQ
@postofficenews
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From: Tim McCormack {.
Sent: 23 January 2015 16:
To: flagcaseadvisor
Cc: Paula Vennells
Subject: RE: Our Ref: ECT 1153/14 - New Year Update - This has now got quite serious
Angela
I have been asked to brief a Member of Parliament on this matter and in order to so I
need to respond to your email.
Please see my comments below in italics.
I will respond to your earlier email in due course as well.
In your response below you make no mention about the problem of the financial loss
incurred by the subpostmaster when this error occurs and he is required to print an
additional label at his own cost.
To be clear - I have pointed out to you and Ms Vennells that the loss POL incur is the
intrinsic value of the postage label and not the face value.
This is the most important issue I have raised and it manifests itself in other ways within
the Horizon system. I have found another two examples and am currently investigating
these. One of these could have extremely serious repercussions for Post Office Ltd.
I would urge you to confirm whether or not you concur with my assertion as to the true
value of Post Office losses in the examples I have raised to date.
I have also informed you that many subpostmasters suffering the financial consequences
of the printing problems have, by their own admission, recouped these losses by, shall
we say, unethical means. To date you have not issued an advisory notice to
subpostmasters not to do this and in failing to do so you are condoning such
behaviour. I am sure that you are perfectly aware of the serious ramifications of this.
Regards
Tim McCormack
You learn more from one criticism than from ten compliments
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Subject: Our Ref: ECT 1153/14 - New Year Update - This has now got quite serious
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 13:04:41 +0000
Dear Mr McCormack
Thank you for your recent e-mails to Paula Vennells on 10" January regarding postage labels. As the senior
manager responsible for reviewing and improving the way in which Post Office® supports Postmasters in
running their post offices your e-mail has been referred to me for a response.
As I have explained when we have spoken and also in my previous emails, I can assure you that we take any
claim of potential problems Postmasters are experiencing in Branch very seriously.
This is not a claim - the incidents I have reported to you have actually taken place. In one particular instance,
as you are aware, the subpostmaster in question was rushed to hospital. Not something he is likely to have
made up, plus of course he wisely took a photograph of the offending label so we have a date and time of an
early occurrence. As you have provided no specific details of these instances to me despite my numerous
requests for this information I am unable to investigate them. Therefore until such a time as I am able to verify
what happened in such instances I regard these as claims.
I would like to make clear that I have reported to you that I! am aware of many instances of this error that have
been mentioned in several online forums over a period of years by a number of different subpostmasters. It
appears that the help line has not seen fit to record these different calls ina separate category which would of
course hinder any investigation. I have no access to the help line records but if there is no accessible records in
the POL help line that is not to say the incidents did not take place many of which were phoned in to the help
line. The way in which the helpline has recorded such instances would depend on how the caller relayed the
incident to the helpline operator. It could be determined that it was a printer malfunction and as such the call
would be transferred from the NBSC helpline to the Horizon Service Desk. All calls to both helplines are
documented in a caller log. What I have requested from you is the detail of some or any of the branches that
have reported such instances to the helpline so that I can access the call logs to understand what the issue was
and from there determine next steps in terms of the transaction process.
I have taken personal ownership of investigating such claims but to do so effectively, as I have explained, I
need the detail of the issue so that I can examine what has happened in that instance
You have the detail. I provided it to you and it also lies within Post Office records. I have told you that many
subpostmasters have logged calls to the help desk about the label printing problem. By your own admission
you appear not to have tried very hard to find this information. I can confirm that to my knowledge at least
two calls to the help desk were made in the last few weeks about the label printing problem. During those
calls no indication was made that this type of error was now being specifically monitored.
Action Point A. You should ensure that the help desk takes details of such problems when they are reported
and ensure that these are reported to you.
The secondary problem, recoupment of losses incurred by subpostmasters as a result of this event is by far the
more serious. Again you have the detail of the financial consequences of this error which I have provided to
you. You have only provided an example of such an incident. Without details of specific cases I am unable to
determine the financial consequences. You do not need evidence of this because it exists as part and parcel of
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the procedural portion of the Horizon system. The postage label transaction exists as does the spoilt and
rejected label transaction. However the non-printing of the label isn’t a transaction but rather would be a
consequence of the user mistakenly advising the Horizon system that the label had printed correctly when
indeed it had not.
Note : For the avoidance of doubt and for clarity, as agreed with others previously, when referring to the
'Horizon' system. I am, and have been, referring to the system as a whole. This includes, the hardware, the
software and the operational procedures in force at any given time.
Whilst the example you detail illustrates at high level the type of transaction in question, it does not take into
account that after each label is printed the Horizon system, as an important safeguard, asks the Horizon user
to confirm whether the label has been printed correctly. This safeguard step is of course there to try to avoid
any human error but where the Horizon user mistakenly confirms that the label has been printed correctly
when this is not the case, the label value will record in the customer stack but there would have been no label
printed. In such instances this is Horizon user error and not a fault with Horizon.
Note: I refer to my email to Paula on the 10th January. [I don’t believe I’ve seen this e-mail — will need copy
from ECT] Quote "the SPMR has confirmed via Horizon that the label had printed correctly". I have taken this
fact into consideration.
Note: Somewhere along the line you have forgotten that there are two possible errors here that lead to the
same result. One is overprinting and the other is an intermittent fault. I have detailed how both could occur. I
have enough photographic evidence of labels that have been produced as a result of either of these errors to
suggest that both types of errors are likely to occur. If there are labels produced by the printer then these labels
can either be rejected or claimed as spoilt so there would be no financial loss to the Spmr. With regard to the
label that has been overprinted if the information can be read then a spoilt label can be claimed. [What’s the
process where the label is illegible? TBC]
During our phone conversation I detailed to you exactly how you could go about investigating the intermittent
fault which I have re-iterated in my written report on the subject. As you seem to have forgotten all about the
possibility of an intermittent fault it is not surprising that you have not investigated this at all. I have not
forgotten but requested specific details rather than as Tim suggested doing a full system ie every terminal at
the same time printing postage labels.
To be clear, I have absolutely no doubt that I can prove the possibility of an intermittent error in a court of
law. Iamalso absolutely certain that you cannot prove it does not exist.
Action Point B: ensure that an investigation takes place into the label printing problem as it occurs in branch in
order to determine the sources of the problem. In addition it is an absolute requirement that POL arrives at an
estimated figure regarding losses incurred (more about this later)
The broader issue here I believe is about the Postmaster being able to rectify a mistake he or a staff member
has made because postage labels transactions, once accepted as correctly printed by the Horizon user, cannot
be reversed. You have helpfully outlined a possible improvement which I am considering alongside other ways
we might address this to help Horizon users. I will be in a position to update soon.
Note: I first raised this matter with Ms Vennells on the 10th December 2014. You have taken no action with
regard to notifying subpostmasters about the problem nor informed the help desk to take a special note of any
person reporting a similar problem.
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Action Point C: You should remove immediately the facility to print bulk labels from Horizon until such time as
you have investigated this matter properly. This - I repeat - should include a full investigation into the
‘intermittent’ error.
Note: Both the overprinting error and the intermittent error should be described as a systemic error as it
relates to the Horizon system. You have acknowledged that one error exists and have not denied that the
other exists as well. Until such time as you can prove otherwise POL should make no claims as to there being
no systemic error in Horizon (as per my earlier definition) that causes financial loss to the subpostmaster.
Action Point D: in my opinion POL will be required, in due course, to make financial restitution to all those that
have suffered financial loss as result of POL misinterpretation of the losses POL have incurred as a result of not
only these errors but other errors that fit into the same category and have yet to be investigated. It is a legal
requirement for POL to inform their Auditors of this potential liability and it should be recorded in the annual
accounts.
I cannot comment in respect of the other matters referred to in your email because despite my request you
have not been able to provide any evidence which shows exactly what is happening. I understand that you are
passing on information you have picked up from other Postmasters and do not want to disclose any more
information to me, but I am sure you understand that without seeing the evidence relating to specific
circumstances it is impossible for me to investigate. If you are able to provide the evidence I have requested I
will ensure that a full investigation is carried out of any incidents and I will respond accordingly to those
Postmasters.
Note: I believe you are referring to the intermittent problem here but then again it is hard to tell. I informed
you during our phone call that the best way to test this was to ask each and every subpostmaster to print off at
least 10 postage labels using the batch label printing process and send them to you. I.am sorry if you didn't
understand how easy it would be.
Yours sincerely
Angela Van Den Bogerd
Head of Partnerships
Post Office Ltd
Email:
Post Office Ltd
Registered in England and Wales number: 2154540 Registered Office:148 Old Street LONDON EC1V 9HQ.
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