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From: Mark Underwood! ~
Sent: Fri 20/03/2015 10:04:55 AM (UTC)
To: Alisdair Camerori
Ce:
Parsons, Andrewf GRO !
Subject: RE: Second Sight's Part Two Report and assertions made in relation to Suspense accounts
Hi Rod if you could, as detailed below, pull together the numbers and rebuttal to the below paragraph by COB today
that would be fantastic.
Mark
23.11. We note that Post Office's control and reconciliation procedures rely on correct information being supplied by
third party clients. It follows that, if incorrect information is provided by any client company, this can give rise to a loss
being charged to a branch. We also note that, for most of the past five years, substantial credits have been made to
Post Office’s Profit and Loss Account as a result of unreconciled balances held by Post Office in its Suspense Account.
This needs to be challenged. We are comparing our data with that of third parties in the normal way. The value of the
differences is tiny compared to the value of transactions being processed — Rod can give you the numbers. The credits
are not at all substantial in that context and the amounts relating to branches are even smaller - £33k from memory in
the most recent year.
From: Alisdair Cameron
Sent: 18 March 2015.99;09
To: Mark Underwoods®°;
Cc: Rod Ismay; Belinda Crowe; Parsons, Andrew
Subject: RE: Second Sight's Part Two Report and assertions made in relation to Suspense accounts
2 Comments below. Thanks Al
From: Mark Underwood
Sent: 18 March 2015 08:
To: Alisdair Cameron; Rod Ismay
Cc: Parsons, Andrew; Belinda Crowe
Subject: RE: Second Sight's Part Two Report and assertions made in relation to Suspense accounts
Hi Alisdair & Rod,
Have you managed to take a look at the below request just yet? We are hoping to get our response to their Part Two
Report finalised by the end of this week.
Many thanks
Mark
From: Mark Underwood:
Sent: 13 March 2015 13:24
To: Alisdair Cameron; Rod Ismay
Cc: Parsons, Andrew; Belinda Crowe
Subject: Second Sight's Part Two Report and assertions made in relation to Suspense accounts
Alisdair and Rod,
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On Tuesday we received Second Sight’s updated Part Two report.
Within the report is a section where they assert Second Sight has experienced significant difficulty in obtaining access
to a number of documents they believe are necessary for the purposes of their investigation. This includes “detailed
transactions relating to items held in Post Office's Suspense Account(s) and to disputed transactions on a number of
third party client accounts held by Post Office”.
Below are the relevant paragraphs relating to your recent meetings with Second Sight and this assertion.
Could you let me know if any of the below paragraphs are factually incorrect and whether as they say, Post Office has
agreed to provide the information as detailed in paragraph 2.12?
Transaction data relating to third party client accounts
2.9. Post Office operates a number of client accounts with business partners such as Royal Mail, Bank of Ireland,
HMRC, DWP, DVLA and many others. Transactions from branches relating to these business partners are allocated to
the appropriate client account before being reconciled with information provided directly from the business partner.
Normally these transactions are matched without difficulty but occasionally errors occur or disputes arise where the
transaction details shown on Horizon and the transaction details reported by the third party client differ.
2.10. In these circumstances an adjustment referred to as a Transaction Correction (TC) may be generated in order to
correct an error previously made in a branch. Post Office has told us that its policy is to write off unexplained debit
balances on third party client accounts, but that any unexplained credit balance will be left open in case the matter is
subsequently resolved. Eventually these long outstanding credit balances will be transferred to Post Office’s general
Suspense Account and may be taken to its Profit & Loss Account (“P&L Account”) if they have remained unresolved for
more than three years.
2.11. A number of Applicants have reported that they have suffered unexplained losses or have received TCs relating
to transactions with Post Office’s third party clients. We had informed Post Office, on 18 June 2014, of our wish to
investigate the possibility that some of these unexplained losses could be represented by transactions subsequently
taken to the credit of its P&L Account.
2.12. We have been advised that, in each of the financial years 2012, 2013 and 2014, amounts in excess of £100,000
have been taken to the credit of Post Office’s P&L Account and we have
asked for a detailed breakdown of those amounts, together with corresponding transactions from the individual third
party client accounts. This is a complex issue and, whilst Post Office has agreed to provide us with this information.
Information has been shared on the operation of the suspense account credits and we agreed at the most recent
meeting that we had no further questions on the suspense account itself. We have recently asked for some numerical
data on aspects of the client accounts themselves, to confirm that we can close this issue. This information is
outstanding.
In addition at paragraph 23.11 of their report Second Sight state:
23.11. We note that Post Office's control and reconciliation procedures rely on correct information being supplied by
third party clients. It follows that, if incorrect information is provided by any client company, this can give rise to a loss
being charged to a branch. We also note that, for most of the past five years, substantial credits have been made to
Post Office’s Profit and Loss Account as a result of unreconciled balances held by Post Office in its Suspense Account.
This needs to be challenged. We are comparing our data with that of third parties in the normal way. The value of the
differences is tiny compared to the value of transactions being processed — Rod can give you the numbers. The credits
are not at all substantial in that context and the amounts relating to branches are even smaller - £33k from memory in
the most recent year.
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Is this factually correct?
Many thanks for your help
Mark