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Message
From: Lesley J Sewell a
Sent: 29/06/2013 1
To: Simon Baker {
cc: Gina Gould i
Subject: RE: Summary of Receipts Payments problems
Simon
A couple of comments:
Can we change the reference from Bug to fault.
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.
And if they did have to put their own money in, at what point did we reimburse them and did we give them so sort of
additional payment due to inconvenience.
Thx
Gina: Can you print a copy for my SS file. Thx
Lesley J Sewell
Chief Information Officer
148 Old Street, LONDON, EC1V 9HQ
fs 4
Postline
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From: Simon Baker
Sent: 28 June 2013 17:36
To: Lesley ] 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
March 2011 Letters sent to branches and corrections made
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Problem Description
The problem occurs as part of the process of moving Discrepancies into Local Suspense.
There was a bug, introduced as part of HNG, that in certain circumstances meant that discrepancies were not
properly cleared to Local Suspense.
This means that the gain or loss remained, unresolved, within the discrepancy account.
e 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)
This problem was automatically picked up by the system, which had been designed to flag up these type of
discrepancies
Impact to sub postmasters
e 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
"222311 Sprotbrough Mr John R Hardwick £115.60
435026 —_Little Thurrock Mr James Thandi £88.77
,
308611 Bettws Mr Kabal Singh £50.28
131824 Crewe Road North = Mr Ajaz Saber £486.35
"170114 Herongate Dr Lalani Wickramasekere £37.83
r
272434 West End (Haydock) Mr Simon John Heaton £37.17
176410 Dalston Mr Mark Stakim £29.41
438824 —_ Penicuik Mr WB McGinley £23.97
065114 East Hanningfield Mr Ashraf Rahman £20.06
"235642 — Plasmarl Ms Michaela Inta lona Sviket £11.20
r
319504 — Wellow storage site Mr Roger Anthony Jacob £3.97
"202340 Dronfield Mr Nigel Gregory £3.65
r
056948 Westerham Mr Manjit S Kailey £3.15
"341349 Kepwick Mrs Patricia Bentley £1.95
400207 Swadlincote Tamworth Co-operative Socie £1.62
436217 ‘Valley Road Mr Geoffrey Hallam £0.34
158618 Kington Mr Paul Calverley -£0.09
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
¢ 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 Assurance
postoffice.co.uk
@postofficenews
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