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Note
Client: Post Office Limited
Matter: Horizon IT System-Group Action Matter no: — 364065.1369
Attending:
Name: Mandy Robertson Location: Bristol Date: 15 January 2018
Start time: Units:
Folder E — Lisa doing
Person speaking
Victoria Brooks Testing...testing. 2nd part of interview with Angela van den Bogard
(Angela)
Angela — 0.6 2? we saw come in and we were so delighted that ....
Victoria That's really kind of you.
So what we did do, during the break was, we reviewed what we had already
asked you. I've looked at my questions that weren't for you and I've added
something to those as well if that's alright.
Angela Of course. Yes.
Victoria We are just coming onto Horizon, and start with a question on that.
From your point of view, what's the biggest weakness in Horizon, if
anything?
Angela There was weakness in it for me as it's a bit clunky. So, you know when
people think of computer systems they think of, you know, your laptop and
you can stick something into Google and it pops up so it has its weaknesses
in terms of its clunky and it seems like accessing Horizon online. In terms of
it, and sometimes re. the way that we need to go into get things done in
terms of just interrogating the system to get the information it is a bit clunky
as well.
So the greatest weakness for me is it is chunky. Is it secure in terms of what
it was built to do? It does exactly what we asked it to do when we built it so I
have every confidence in the system. What I think the weakness there is
that a number of people, lots of people actually, don't know how to use it as
well as they should.
So as long as things were all hunky dory they're fine. But when you start
looking for the discrepancies, and isn't even the Horizon system per se, it's
the fact of how they find a way around that. Because they wouldn't,
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fortunately many people don't have discrepancies very often. And it is one
of those things I don't have to do very often so...
Things like, you know where the system or the screen goes down and stuff,
it's those kinds of things. Its things that happen infrequently is how quickly
they get themselves into that. And the way they are able to and I can't see a
way you could change this actually but the way they can just hit a button and
move onto the next screen without even reading it.
Victoria Mm.
Angela Because it can just literally go "bang bang bang bang" and it's gone.
Victoria Yes
Angela But again that's not the system itself, it’s the user.
Victoria Yes.
Angela Just trying to shortcut what's there.
Victoria And we all have a tendency to just hit OK on whatever message pops up just
to get onto the next one
Angela Exactly
Victoria And sometimes you think after you have done it, "oh that wasn't right".
Angela Yes, exactly. And then it's too late and it's done.
Victoria Yes.
Angela Its like MoneyGram when I told you earlier, it's gone. You know, it's in
another country and they're out of the door very quickly. So that's I think for
me, you know we were looking to replace with IBM a couple of years ago,
we did a lot of work into that and obviously that relationship just basically
dissolved. Partly because IBM didn't understand the complexity of a lot of
the transactions and things really. So you know we've got what we've got
and we've been trying to make it better in terms of easier but it's still an old
system.
Victoria Yes, ok, that's helpful.
There have been various communications as I understand it, that have taken
place with sub-postmasters and more widely about problems, bugs and
errors in Horizon, and I'm not sure the extent to which you were involved
with any of those if at all?
Angela Do you mean from our Post Office?
Victoria Yes
Angela Or what's been in the news
Victoria Um, yes.
Angela I have been involved in terms of what the communication is and who it's
gone to. What we've done is we've communicated to those affected
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branches, we've not gone widely with more broader comms and again I think
that's the appropriate, you know this is about dealing with situations, if
there's something that we felt was a risk then I would be the first to be there
saying we need to communicate that so everybody is aware of it. So, yes I
have had some involvement in those.
Victoria
Ok.
Angela
But that's a while back now. Because we quoted the two in one report we do
the second sites which was, years ago now, that was three years ago
Victoria
I think it was 2014.
Angela
It all just merges now, because there was a number of documents that I was
involved in. Was there a separate question to that one or not?
Victoria
Um, well...
Were there communications, who did they go to and, I know this is
information we've got, but what we are trying to do is to...we are checking
what has been told to us before so that we can go back into the
documents...
Angela
Oh right, ok. So there'd be a communication but not a wide communication,
it's not network wide, it's just to those affected branches and I forget the
numbers but they were very small, almost like 20 odd I think...! think there
may be a little bit more than that but against, you know a network of 11% it
was tiny. And then, when that happens, if anything happens like that, and
we do do is make sure our Helpline knows about, or if you don't know a
detail its, if you get a call on this there is where you need to go. You put
them in contact with that person so that they can actually...because that
potentially is quite, could be quite alarmist really you know, alarming for
people. Particularly the communication that worries me is what's in the
media.
Victoria
Yes, that ..
Angela
Because that is all a bit more speculative.
And then on the back of that we tend to then get flurries of activity into our
Call Centres for questions coming in which we've dealt with.
Victoria
Were you involved in the media ones as well?
Angela
Yes.
Victoria
OK.
Angela
So at the height of the mediation I was involved in everything. It's only the
last year or so when we were going into the litigation that, you know,
because once we closed the mediation scheme, predominantly the work
drops off and the media attention drops off. So we get the odd flurry every
now and then on the back of something, but we are keeping, we are not
giving a lot of it oxygen so some of the stuff that comes through on
Facebook and Twitter, it's just really a street fight, we just ignore. We have
agreed a strategy in terms of how we deal with communications. Because
they all try and target Paula trying to, you know, bait Paula into giving a
response. They're being very personal actually which is not appropriate.
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Victoria No.
Angela So yes, that seems to be working well actually. But anything that comes in
that's anything to do with Horizon or anything, it pings straight out to us. So
Roderick is always involved in it, you know in terms of the number of us on
that and then if we need to seek further then we would go further with that as
well.
We tend not to bring Andy into some of it unless we have a particular
problem
Victoria OK.
We have probably got some more bog standard questions about Horizon but
I think probably that's not or you, I should probably be speaking to Fujitsu
and other people about that.
Angela For the technical stuff anything to do with how the system works then I would
suggest you talk to Cath and Shirley.
Victoria Cath and Shirley
Angela I'd wrap that up into...and give you their experience of operation and how it
works.
Victoria Great
Angela 7.47 But let's its [@] technical stuff...they have also been involved on, if there are
some issues that come up that we don't instinctively know the answer to and
I've gone to put it through, then Cath has worked with some of that detail.
So I've escalated a few issues with them over the last couple of years. A
guy called Pete Newscombe is the contact.
Victoria Oh yes.
Angela And a guy called Steve somebody, I forget his surname, but Cath is close
and Shirley is close to that ok so anything around that, and if you haven't
spoken to them, and you haven't, you'd be amazed at how much they know.
Victoria I've dealt with them in the context of lots of different things and they always
do, but I haven't spoken to them about, I haven't basically tried to take
witness evidence from them yet
Angela Honestly, they're great.
Victoria1 Amore wider question. From your point of, you'd said that you are confident
in Horizon, and so the question I've got here is explain why Horizon was
robust and fit for purpose. If you've got anything specific to add to that?
Angela So explain why..
Victoria1 Why it worked.
Angela Why it worked? I think we just need to remember what you are supposed to
do. So when I gave you the example earlier about the manual cash account,
it is basically that. So I describe it to some people as, it's like a calculator,
it's a big calculator, and it does exactly what we ask it to do. So it was built
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knowing that some things potentially would go wrong — like we would lose
connectivity that a power line would go down or the comms line would be
faulty, and the recovery steps had been built into there. So everything, when
you build a system in any way to do a certain job, then part of the stress test
is "what if this happens, what do you do.." all of that stuff has been built in
there. So in that respect it was built for purpose. The other important thing,
and really important I think from my perspective, is because it records every
key stroke and because we keep all information for 7 years, we can go back
and have a look. Now it's not the easiest process to do that, and we never I
think anticipated we would be doing something like, as large scale as this,
particularly pulling all the information for the 150 cases we had in the
mediation scheme, and the contract we have with Fujitsu to do that shows us
that we had never expected to do that very often because we have a
contract where we can have so many enquiries a month in price and then it
costs a fortune after that. So that itself, you know we designed it with a bit of
a fool proof mechanism but one that we never expected to use to a great
extent. So in that respect I think it is fit for purpose, it does exactly what it
was intended to do. It's not a piece of equipment that you'd expect to buy
today. So when you go and buy a laptop you'd never expect to get that it's
slow. You know it doesn't do the things you'd expect it to do, so it's not that
and I think people try and compare it to that which is why we have some of
the problems.
Victoria1 But then I suppose it was introduced in 2000 and it has been changed since
then. Was the change between those two..
Angela So we've done some software changes. First of all we went from Horizon to
Horizon Online. So prior to the online facility we used to have to poll
information. So the information would be extracted from branch overnight.
That's the big difference whereas now it's a live situation.
Victoria1 Ok.
Angela So that's the difference. The hardware is exactly the same hardware today,
well for part of the network, than it was when we put it in and only now we're
refreshing the hardware. So the hardware itself has held up really well,
given, if you think about how many transactions, billions of transactions to
deal with and there's been some refinement around the screen, the usability,
in terms of how the screens are, the figures and how many screens you
need to go through to sell a stamp, all that kind of stuff. So we've done
some nuancing around trying to make it quicker, trying to make it easier, but
basically it was built on the same platform.
Victoria Is it touch screen?
Angela Yes.
Victoria And has it always been touch screen.
Angela Yes.
Victoria I would imagine it was touch screen when it gets discussed.
Angela It has always been touch screen, yes.
Victoria So that must have been quite ... It was ahead of its time wasn't it?...
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Angela
Yes it was. You could either use a keyboard or you could use the screen.
Depending on what preference, and actually sometimes transactions lend
themselves better to the keyboard than to the screen sometimes and
obviously you need a keyboard to type in, you didn't type in words and stuff,
on the screen, you did it on the keyboard.
And there was also the mag stripe in the keyboard at one point as well.
Victoria
For swiping cards?
Angela
Yes.
Victoria
OK. You were talking about the contract with Fujitsu when it meant that it
was costly to get additional data. Was there any sort of process for that, that
you were aware of before the mediation scheme.
Angela
Oh yes of course it was always there. So typically used by our Security
Team when they were doing the investigations into the potential cases but it
was always there. So I forget the number and Cath and Shirley will tell you,
but we had so many requests, I think it was 10 a month that we could make,
that was within the agreement and anything over that, then we had to pay
for. It became quite expensive and it depends on how many months' data
you were pulling and stuff. And then all you got was the raw data and then
you had to manipulate that yourself then. So it was quite a laborious task.
Now going to the mediation scheme, the way we designed it and we had
some of the guys who could manipulate how we pulled the data into, you
know we got into quite a good way of working with it and then... Cath and
Shirley know the way round it really well.
Victoria
Was there any guidelines given to people about when or not, when they
could request data back at that point...
Angela
When you say "they" you mean...
Victoria
People in Post Office who might need it. So given the financial constraints.
Angela
It was predominantly user safe for the Security Investigation Team. It would,
I think it was only ever used for them till we started pulling the data.
Victoria
Ok, so
Angela
Contracts advisers would have requested some of the information from the
investigating cases in terms of disciplinary stuff, but it would have gone to,
the route through was always through a security team.
Victoria
Ok.
Angela
There is a lady called Helen Dickinson
Victoria
I am seeing Helen, I think 2 weeks' today.
Angela
Helen would be good to talk to about that.
What I have seen, you know when I've looked at some of the cases. People
will say "I want the data" and I'd say we're not going to pull all 7 years' data
and it might be "I made a loss of £50 I want the data", well it's going to cost
us £400 to get it. So there have been cases where we've pushed back and
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that's what I've come across but there are others when I've thought "no you
should have got the data on that one". You know so we are not looking at
some of the cases I've looked at would not have been perhaps as
accommodating as perhaps we should have been in some cases to get to
the level of information. That said the Postmaster in a number of cases say
well "I just want all the data because it must be there" as a kind of a last
hope as opposed to trying to hone it so it could be filtered to a certain thing.
We are more accommodating now but given where we've come from with
the mediation scheme and we're able to kind of go "well we can do this but
we need it to look like this". The first time I got involved I was dealing with a
case, I forget the name now, a few years ago, it was quite a public case
actually because we audited and we found a discrepancy and we
terminated, suspended I think. Because we did move towards termination
they closed the Post Office, locked the mail in and they came into quite a
standoff and we panicked internally and put them back in post but it was all
to do with, and that's when I got involved and started looking at the data, at
that point. That was the first time I really understood how I could actually tell
the story from the data, which was quite a revelation actually. It was an
interesting case because we had Mark Baker in the room as their
Postmaster's representative, Mark Baker is quite active in, he was part of the
said Exec and then breakaway he is part of the, he's trying to get
Postmasters to be represented as part of the CWEU.
Victoria
Ah, I've heard about them.
Angela
Yes, so It's interesting so that's the first time I really met Mark and it was
interesting so we sat in this room, myself and it was Kevin Gillon who was
the network and sales Director at the time and my boss was on leave and I
had been bought in because she was away and I worked with one other girl,
Helen Rose, in the investigation team so we pulled the data and I sat with
Postmistress and her husband and Mark Baker and it was all to do with, you
know, she swore that they'd never logged on, never did this and, anyway, so
I was able to show the data and talk them through. And when you know at
some point the penny has dropped and you know when you go "oh shit, I've
just been found out" because it was all to do with the Postmistress and her
daughter and her daughter had been using the system under her mother's
password and I said to her mother "Do you share passwords?" "No." "Did
you do this transaction?" "No, I swear I never did that transaction" and then I
showed her the evidence, at that point Mark Baker asked for a recess and
could we have a conversation. And at that point, it was just as all this stuff
‘started kicking off with the mediation and he said to me at the time, he said "I
have been contacted by..." it was in the south-west, south-east, "I was
contacted by this radio, this tv programme and I have agreed to give an
interview telling, saying how bad Horizon is and why they shouldn't." and he
said "in light of this conversation, I am withdrawing, I am not going to do that
interview" because he could see exactly what I was telling him and he pulled
away at that point. It's interesting actually because he's been a bit of a thorn
in the side but it's interesting because he is around me a couple of times and
in one case in particular he's been pushing the whole status bit as well
actually, on the employee bit, the Postmasters. He rang me up one day and
said "Ange, we've got this situation in the branch" I forget what it was was,
anyway. And he asked and I said "Mark, if I understand this right are you
asking me to help you out here?" and he went "Well it's in the good of the.."
I said "Are you asking me to help you out?" He went "Yes, would you mind
helping me out?" I said "Of course I will help out the Postmistress" and I
sorted whatever the problem was anyway. But it was interesting actually
because he knows I am going to be straight down the line and he knew at
the point, he knew I had him over a barrel if he wanted to know. We did
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actually reinstate them. He said, we kind of went “wipe the slate clean and
reinstate".
Victoria
And was that because it was the daughter that was at fault?
Angela
Yes. Contractually we could have but we didn't
Victoria
And then you said the daughter can have no involvement going forward or..
Angela
chap then, was it Val, I think his name was. Very vocal chap. : G
and he clearly was the master, you know as very often is the ca:
wife hardly said a word in this meeting, other than confirming that she is
happy for him to talk on her behalf which was a difficult one as it often is in
these situations. But then I was his long lost friend, he was Linked-In,
pinging me stuff...
Anyway, sorry I digress again sorry.
Victoria
Ok well I think we have covered the Horizon bit but will speak to Cath and
Shirley about it in more detail.
We have covered some of the areas that I am talking about next, contractual
breach and performance of issues already but hopefully will find ones that, I
appreciate 100:20.33}
The section that I am looking at is "Process for dealing with breach of
agreement and if there is a misuse of cash suspected and whether or not
that process has changed over time".
Angela
It's been the same forever. The way we deal with the consequences of that,
which I talked about earlier about the suspension bit has changed, and we
have continued to review our mitigating circumstances criteria but
fundamentally the process has been the same for a very long time.
Victoria
Something I want to go into detail with more is the actual investigation that's
carried out by Post Office but I don't know if that's one for you or
somebody...
Angela
It depends what investigation you're talking about — criminal investigation?
Victoria
No, from the civil side, just to satisfy yourself they have done whatever it is
that they're accused of doing probably, false accounting, or, if it's not the
kind you're going to involve the criminal ...
Angela
Ok, so this has changed over the years. So the investigation we used to do
formally, was always done through the Security Investigation Team and
Helen Dickinson is the best person to talk to. She is in the PACE space.
She's the only person I think we've got currently now because we don't do
any prosecutions, as you know, so. So in terms of investigation, the process
by which you investigate, if it comes up as part of an audit then obviously
there's the audit, is the initial fact find. And then the way the contract adviser
deals with that is that they will do some investigation to establish the facts on
the back of that. That process has pretty much been the same for a long
time. Although on the back of the mediation scheme what I did find out, and
didn't realise, is that the skillset that I have built in my team with Shirley and
Cath was far better than the contracts team and actually we were then
supplementing that for them, we were doing the legwork for them. Because,
whilst, the contracts advisers typically had come through the branch route
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and therefore they have a very good understanding of how it used to be in
their day, but because if they had been in the contracts adviser role for a
long time then they were less familiar with how things worked and actually in
doing this work I did find that we again, Cath and Shirley and myself, were
more qualified to investigate than half the Investigation Team were. Ina
number of cases they didn't understand and we were training them on how
to work, what certain products do and didn't do. So we had built a very good
level of skillset in terms of where to look and how to build that case and how
to do a proper root cause analysis. So particularly Cath and Shirley and the
guys in that team do that really well. So we have a much broader end to end
bit now which is, so if there's an issue for instances, that comes our way,
Cath and Shirley would go and do that investigation and then try and ...
Victoria
OK.
Angela
So the difference to what we do now is we try to explain what's happened as
to establishing that money's gone missing. If you know what! mean. Do
you understand what I'm saying, so you can actually establish if money has
gone missing without trying to explain how it's gone missing.
Victoria
Yes.
Angela
What we do is explain what we can see, what we can use the data to tell us,
to be able to explain and that's why we can say, well it's one of two things
now. Because the process of elimination was taking everything else out of
the equation. And that's the difference in terms of the depth of the
information of where we can go to and actually the thought process and the
understanding we can put around it. now that's really important in terms of
some of those implied terms and the clauses we were talking through earlier,
Victoria, some of that because we have come a long way towards a number
of those things now.
Victoria
OK..
Angela
It's just whether we as an organisation agree that we should put them into
the contracts or not. But in terms of, from the work that we've done with the
mediation scheme, this is what I said to you earlier, you know, out of a
negative can come huge positives, we have a much better way of being able
to establish the reasons behind and actually explain those to the Postmaster,
than we have ever been able to. Or had been inclined to even.
Victoria
So previously it would be more of along the lines of "we can see that this
money..."
Angela
Yes
Victoria
"...therefore, you are responsible for it under the contract..."
Angela
Yes
Victoria
"...therefore you need to pay it". And then the consequences of that will be if
you don't or if you do.
Angela
I think this is part of the problem for a number of people in there is that they
don't know what happened or they don't know why and they're looking to us
to explain it, and in some cases we can and in some cases we can't. but
previously we never used to and I think that's you know, which is why some
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of these, when I have gone into the mediation sessions I have done with
Postmasters, without being a mediation, just to explain stuff, it's quite a
revelation for them actually and for the first time in like 20 years it makes
sense which in itself is helpful for them but if only I'd known that 20 years
ago, which is usually the response I get! It's unfortunate but I can only deal
with what I am faced with at the time. Ok?
Victoria
Ok that's really helpful. These are more things for John Breedon, I think and
for Cath and Shirley. I've got to the section about Sub-postmasters as
employees and its exactly that thing we were talking about I think with the
chap from the CWU.
Angela
Yes
Victoria
From your point of view asked "what's your view on the question about
whether sub-postmasters are employees or not". I mean I know it's not what
do you think is there that points towards it or what do you think there is that
takes away from it
Angela
I think it's a bit of a mixed actually. My view is “are they employees” no
they're not, they think they are, most of them don't think they are. Would like
to be "yes" they probably would. In some cases and others absolutely not.
So it's kind of a mixed bag. I always remember that case I talked to you
about earlier about, it was the Griffiths' case where the chap walked in front
of the bus. I sat with his daughter because she wanted to meet with me just
to explain a few things, you know, so I was the punch-bag for the family at
the time, which you'd expect, and I'm happy to take that, because it was a
very difficult situation. So I ended up meeting with his mother, with his wife,
with his daughter, which as you can imagine was very difficult conversations.
But one of the things she did say to me was, she worked then, I think still
does for Deloittes and, covers the tax and stuff. She said to me, "So if he
was a franchisee, why did you take NI contributions from him then?" So I
explained the status of the contract and stuff and how it worked and then she
said "No actually my father always said he was self-employed." So even
though some things don't point to a self-employed status, because do the
PAYE and the NI contributions, we deduct at source, not for all of them
because they can elect not to, but typically we defaulted that position. It was
always the understanding that they were self-employed.
Victoria
Yes.
Angela
And there was never any doubt about that when we engaged them in a
contract. Now whether they chose to try and take it differently, you know
long-term, but we did have nuances in the contract that we went to earlier
which, you know, things like, even allowing them to go off to do territorial
army cover and things like that. Some really odd things in there. And then,
this really comes out of a relationship really with the fed because we would
be, in the sub postmaster contract it could be quite vague on some
information then go into a huge amount of information on how much
compensation they were entitled to if they lost a finger...
Victoria
Yes
Angela
It's like "what?". But that's just, it was such an old contract, which actually
has served the business well for a very long time. Yes, so that I think there
are some anomalies you go, if the status is franchisee and not employee
then "why do you pay me for holiday and why do you pay me.."_ You know
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we don't pay you we make a contribution towards. That's the difference.
Victoria
That sort of subtle difference can be quite important.
Angela
All done?
Background talking
So there are those subtle differences around ... background noises — cups of
tea .... So these are the important things and when I sat down with
Postmasters and they've said "so am I an employee or not then" I've gone
through and they go "oh yeah I get it" And I know I've got to do my tax
return, and I know I've got to do this, cos they do the tax return for the retail
side anyway.
Victoria
Yes, tax returns. Ok. Helpful.
One of the things that is part of that point as well is the difference between
Crown employees and other forms, well they're not forms of postmaster are
they kind of points and Postmasters ..
Angela
Yes.
Victoria
What would you say are the key differences?
Angela
Contract, obviously, which you full appreciate. But just the way of operating
and the relationship with the Post Office. So a Crown employee or directly
managed branch employee, of which I was one, so I can talk really at length
in terms of how it works. So you are recruited to work in a particular role, so
you are recruited to come in and work on accounting and these are the
things that you need to do and you're trained to do that, and the training is
the same training that we give to Postmasters by the way, ok, it's always
been the same training.
Victoria
Yes, ok...
Angela
...that we've given. When I was working in branch I was responsible for my
losses, directly and indirectly in terms of how I dealt with it. so for instances,
in those days, we used to balance weekly and anything, any loss up to £2.75
I think it was, I had to make good. Anything over that I had to declare and
then that was part of my performance review, and if I had so many losses in
so many instances, that was subject to disciplinary, and could lead to me
having my contract, sorry for me being sacked.
So there were very clear roles and responsibilities. Now, so the difference in
the Postmaster and their staff? So the Postmaster had those clear
responsibilities as well, so it was the same products that we did and we had
the same equipment. We had all the same, our system was no different, our
system's exactly the same for the whole of our network. So everything was
the same, it was just around that contract in terms of how we had that
relationship. Communications that came out around everything was the
same. When we did Horizon training we had the same type of events. So
everything was the same. Clearly in an employment status then we had
different arrangements so we would get, you know, whatever our agreement
is, the number of holidays we could take, in terms of the sick absence policy,
all of that you would expect in there. For as long as I can ever remember,
we have always recognised the trade unions, the CWU used to be
called...the Communication Workers Union used to the Union...UCW or
something and Unite was the managers' one, and equally we have always
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recognised the Federation of Postmasters as the representative body for
agents as well, the Postmasters. So there are a number of 100:33.25) the
mirror thing, the real real difference was always the contract, it's how, you
know we dealt with that.
Victoria
OK.
Angela
So even things like the helpline, they all went to the same channel. All the
support structure was the same. Even the holiday substitution and the sick
substitution was processed in the HR Service Centre where we paid, where
we still pay everybody from, Payroll and stuff. So all the back office stuff...
was that contract and everybody knew that difference in terms of, everybody
knew their contract. Even Mark Baker even though he tries to say otherwise,
he always knew.
Victoria
From what you've said about what you would say to people at least when
you were taking them on, you made that very clear.
Angela
Absolutely.
Victoria
It does seem difficult to understand how people could be thinking they were
employees.
Angela
I think the one bit that jars on me is the small office payment. Which is, "we
top you up to minimum wage" that jars on me. Because I am quite clear on
our contractual things so why the hell are we doing that?
Victoria
It's not your problem if they are not making the minimum wage because they
are not your employees and they might be anyway and you wouldn't know it
because of the retail side.
Angela
Yes. Exactly.
Victoria
Yes, that is strange.
Angela
It was something that was quite, when I was Head of Area for Wales, it was
something that was quite high on my radar then because I had the highest
pay bill on the small office payment because, and it comes very much down
to the rural communities, so where you had the small ones, the footfall just
wasn't there so we just automatically and at one point I was, it was a couple
of million pounds, like what?!
Victoria
Really.
Angela
£1.7m sticks in my head for reason in Wales alone, that we were topping up
which for me was unnecessary. We were just spending money, you know.
Victoria
Just to be nice
Angela
Yes, exactly. Now we could argue in that situation we did it to stop them
closing, to stop them falling over, to make sure we kept that presence within
the community. And if that's just the case then I can understand that but it
wasn't documented anywhere for me to understand that properly.
Victoria
Yes, that's a good way of explaining though.
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Angela
Yes. So we did it that way so, the other thing that's quite interesting and has
always stuck with me actually, is when I was in that particular role, going
round visiting branches, because with the margin and a number of these
business is a struggle, alright, so there's a very fine balance. I remember I
was in one branch and it was in the middle of Wales somewhere, can't
remember the name, small retail in almost a stand-alone kind of building,
small one storey building, talking to the sub-postmistress, only met her that
day, and this chap came in and he bought 4 first class stamps and he said
“that's my good deed for the day". So he went and I said what did he mean,
and she said "he just thinks I'm a charity". So he thinks if he comes in and
buys 4 first class stamps then he is doing his bit, his charitable bit, and
therefore, and she said "it really annoys me". Because it was that, you
know. So she was struggling to try and make it work and he was just
thinking well I am just doing you a favour ...
I always remember it because I actually sat on the train coming home and I
pulled this presentation together around Post Offices is not a charity. If you
want to process you need to use it because we just, you know. And it just
literally used that throughout when I was engaged. Because people used to
say to me I used to go to public meetings when I was looking, you know,
Post Office closed, I was looking to reduce the opening hours, which I did, to
try and reduce my small office payment, was "why have I got you on 45
hours a week when clearly you haven't got business for that. And I
remember going to some public meetings and they'd be going, you know,
they all turn out, 50 people in the room giving me a hard time about "why are
you doing this?" and I said "because you're just not using it". So I'd be there
saying, right "So how many of you actually use the Post Office?" 3 hands
would go up. So I said "Why would I be putting money into this?" and what it
really boiled down to, and they did say this to me, is "because without that
Post Office in this community, my house is worthless"
Victoria
Really?
Angela
So we were affecting the value of their, or even the saleability...
Victoria
Which is what people really do care about isn't it?
Angela
So if you just think about it you could watch any of the programmes on TV
now, "Escape to the Country" or whatever it might be, it's got a Post Office,
it's got a pub on the list. Seriously, that's what it boils down to. Which is why
everybody cares about it and it's not because they want to use it per say its
because it affects the value of their property or the ability for them to sell
which is..yeah.
What else, because I am conscious I am digressing an awful lot...
Victoria
No but it's really useful.
All talking
Well for what it's worth I am a prolific user of the Post Office because I love
writing cards and thank you letters and so I am there all the time. And ours
was one that was going to get closed and then didn't. The next thing that
we've touched on a bit already but practical arrangements, because you
touched on, quite interestingly, living on the premises, a lot of other things a
bit like that but if you could start with a bit more about living on the premises,
how it's organised, what involvement Post Office has if any, is there a policy
about who can live there? Anything to do with it because I don't know a
great deal about that.
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Angela
Our interest in the premises is (1) what's their ownership on it or do they
have you know the licence to trade from it. So there's obviously the
permission from the licensing staff, what grade it is, but also can they show
us evidence that they have a legal arrangement to operate from there. And
that's all part of the recruitment process ok, and John Breedon can give you
more details on that. But we have different types of Post Offices and
probably more, perhaps we use less of them now because actually some
postmasters got very good even if they did sell on they didn't sell on the
whole thing they just started the lease, so the number of postmasters who
bought the freehold lived there and when they'd made their money
effectively they sold the Post Office, particularly when it was at the height of
it, so the goodwill element of the Post Office used to trade about two anda
half times remuneration, very very commercially sound. And then they used
to sell that and then they'd hold the lease as well. So they really had it all
ways.
So living on the premises, the context I spoke about earlier was around, you
know the number of things the postmaster had to consider when they were
coming into the business new...
In terms of, did we ever restrict who lives on the property, the premises, no
one ever did, that was never a part of our arrangement with them so what we
expect from them, you had to provide premises from which to operate a Post
Office and they had to have certain conditions on terms of size and can we
get a counter in and is it secure and all that, so we do all the security checks
and that kind of stuff and making sure that the Post Office element itself is
secure and that it's alarmed and ... yes so that was only ever involvement.
Victoria
Did it need to be secure from the domestic premises? Do you see what I
mean, like a proper door between the two or was that not ...
Angela
Into the Post Office itself? Oh yeah so the Post Office had to be that we had
specifications on the thickness of the walls and all that kind of stuff, the
quality of the door, how many mortice locks, all that kind of stuff in there
right, and the security team would give you all that if you needed it.
Victoria
OK.
Angela
In terms of, and this is where over the years we've kind of changed policy.
So I always remember when I used to go and inspect, and at one point we
were insisting, some of my colleagues over the years insisting that they put a
secure door between the Post Office and the upstairs almost, yeah, so we
had, one postmaster was saying to me, and "he wanted me to have an iron
gate, I'm not having an iron gate".. you know ok fine but we need to make
sure that from a tiger kidnap perspective, which was the notice that you
clocked on the way in, how do we secure it. and we did look at the whole,
we didn't put a huge amount of emphasis, other than making sure that we
protected the Post Office itself. So our main focus was the protection of the
postmaster and his staff whilst they were in the Post Office, rather than
whilst they were sleeping at night. We did give them advice on where they
kept their keys so it wasn't obvious, they didn't keep them in the kitchen
drawer or something silly like that and that the spare key was kept
somewhere, you know the obvious things we always offered guidance on
and always offered a security manual which is part of the Horizon Online as
well now which was the dos and don'ts of keeping you safe which was really
important.
Victoria
Ok, that's really helpful.
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In this sort of conglomeration of things section, we talked about the security
checks, taking on the [00:43.42] I think we probably need to speak to some
other people about that. Same with mortgages and borrowing, fit out and
refurbishment
Angela
What's the question now because it has changed over the years
Victoria
Well, what's the process?, how has it changed?
Angela
So the way it's funded has changed particularly because we've been in
programme mode. So, when I first started coming into this area then we
charged an introductory fee, or licence fee or franchise fee, right? Whatever
kind of reference people. So effectively if you were buying the business as a
going concern which we called "commercial transfer" then we didn't charge
an introductory fee typically, although there are some cases where we did
and I'll come back to that in a minute. So when I came into it, if it was a
Greenfield site and it was a new business and there was no commercial
transfer we would then charge 1.5 times remuneration but once they paid
that they sold on commercial, yeah, so they almost bought, sold that on.
In terms of then we made part of the contract, the conditions of appointment
letter, the addendum to that which are "these are the conditions on your
appointment that you have to do" and some of them might be "we want you
to replace the counter screen" because that's their responsibility. It's the
condition that you paint inside every year or whatever it was, conditions that
we used to build into that.
Going back earlier, and this is one of the mediation cases, was we used to
charge a licence fee even where we had a commercial transfer and one of
the cases specifically refers to, and when they ask for the justification of that
it was to things like, "cover the risk that we take with you as a new
postmaster" which I found bizarre because I have never seen that anywhere
and it was never policy it was somebody apparently had said that but it was
something I kind of struggled with originally coming into the role is why we
are we asking for a franchisee? What does a postmaster get in return for the
franchise? Because when you go to some of the other franchises, you
know, common ones like Subway or whoever it is today, you get marketing,
you get this, you get certain expectations whereas we never did quantify
what they got, and they got a lot cos they got to trade under our brand for a
start. And they got the additional footfall that came in and all of that kind of
stuff, but we never really explained that well enough internally or externally
actually. So it was always a bit of a bone of contention for a number of
people.
Where we are today, given where we are with the number of change
programmes we have done we don't charge introductory fees, or licence
fees or anything at the moment, and it was always a thought when we came
out of it that we would do it, but we were caught in the penis
. Because it was government funding, if we charged that we would
have to then pay it back so we stopped doing it because it just seems
pointless. It's just recycling money. The risk of course is that we have
actually devalued the overall proposition now because I don't think we are
ever going to be able to get back to charging introductory fees or franchise
fees unless we actually completely remodel our business model.
Did I answer the question on that one or not?
Victoria
Yes.
I think a similar point, remuneration arrangements for the first year because I
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think sometimes it was different for the first year?
Angela
Well, that's Barry's ....
Victoria
Is that how it was...
Angela
We gave a 25% reduction didn't we...yeah that was what it was, it was
[00:27:38] . So sometimes we charged the introductory which was 1.5% but
then we had a 25% reduction for the first year, but that was short lived. That
stopped many years ago. It was just, some of the early cases that came into
the mediation scheme quoted that but we are talking, it stops I think late 80s.
it was as far back as that. If not early 90s, somewhere around there. But
Paul Inwood would tell you that.
Victoria
Ok, I got the ... [00:48:06]. I'll ask Paul Inwood.
A bit more about the recruitment and interview process because you said
that you were involved with that and you did quite clearly tell us the things in
the contract that you would call out so that was really helpful.
I've got some more general questions, they may not be you so please say if
not.
So the recruitment and vacancy advertising process for appointments or
replacements and how it's changed over time including the three periods that
we are looking at, so pre-Horizon, Horizon and ...
Angela
It hasn't changed much at all actually. We have had a very stringent process
over those years which is, we would advertise any vacancy for a period, I
forget what the level of period it is that we advertise, it's a minimum period,
and we invite applicants, with or without premises, but they have to provide
premises at some point, like whether it was a going concern or whether we
go and look and sort the premises with them, we always did that. So that
process hasn't changed. John Breedon will be able to give you information
on that and potentially Sarah Rimmer because she was part of the back-end
of recruitment. But that's always been the same. It would go up on our
website for a certain period of time. How we looked to attract, sometimes,
years and years ago, we did go and be part of the franchise kind of dense. If
you were looking for an opportunity we would have a roadshow and we
would have a stand. We don't do that anymore. We do it through the
website. But there are quite clear guidelines on how long we got things up
and what we say in them and that's always been quite clear.
Victoria
Ok.
Angela
That hasn't changed other than we used the website where we didn't used to
use a website because of technology advances and stuff.
Victoria
So previously it would have been on paper. Or a noticeboard or something.
Angela
Or with advertising branch. The branch that, so what we would do is we'd
advertise in the branch and we'd put that vacancy in the next three
branches, the neighbouring branches to advertise for the vacancy.
Victoria
These are quite specific questions, the level of response for vacancies, what
information was provided to applicants. Don't know if that's something that
you can cover.
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Angela
So that would come out of [00:50:33] so again talk to Sarah because she's
been there forever. Talk to Sarah if it's not her she'll tell you who, but it's all
in there.
Victoria
Ok, I am seeing her in I think two weeks.
A bit more then about your experience when you actually did do interviews
with people because you said that you did didn't you, are applicants given an
opportunity to ask questions?
Angela
Of course yes. So the way this has changed over the years. So years ago
we used to, they have always had to put a business plan together. So the
application process is ane . And then as the
person interviewing, and we always interviewed in two's, so we always had
that second person there who always took notes to go with it. So the
business plan would come out to us so there'd be, we'd have a business,
finance deal on it so it would come back and these are the questions that we
think you should look at. And it would be things around, you know, ratio and
projections for income generation. And we did used to pull the resale
projections in at that point. So [00:51:49] used to do that bit. So, now what
does that look like, so we'd do an overall viability view. Then we'd ask them
the normal stuff about why and what we're looking to do and then a good
chunk of that interview, which typically lasted about two hours, a good chunk
of that was going through their contractual obligations just to make sure that
they fully understood what they were getting in terms of ... and as I say, as
you go through it and it used to be quite hard work sometimes because it
wasn't one of these nice pleasantry things, it was pleasant obviously, it was
really giving them a hard time. And I used to say at the end of it, "so after all
that are you still interested?". You know, because I really wanted them to
be. There were a couple that actually went "mm, can I think about it?” and
I'd say "yeah, absolutely, think about it".
So yeah, we would write all the things and would say ... give an opportunity
to ask questions and then they would do that. Now very often what I used
to do which isn't normal practice, built whenever I had a vacancy in a branch
and I had, I was in the Cardiff area at the time, at the point of which it must
have been early 90s where it was quite buoyant, the whole Cardiff Bay was
being built overnight so it was very vibrant. I used to typically get about
three or four applicants per vacancy. So what I used to do is I used to say
“right ok, do all the applications, put the business plan in" but I used to meet
them on site before we would even get to an interview, and say "right now
talk me through your plans". So used to go and stand across the road and
look at the branch and say, "tell me what you can see, what are going to
do?" and I used to have almost a pre interview on site so I could really
understand what they were looking to do when, because of my experience of
operating branches, you know, I could influence or give them some food for
thought. So when I got to the interview, that bit was out of the way and it
was really about nuts and bolts this is how you run it. It was a workout, my
interviews with people.
Victoria
That's a really good way of doing it because then you've got the idea of
which location is the best offer for you before you get to the person.
Is the process any different for a replacement as opposed to a new
appointment. So if there was a vacancy...
Angela
Are you talking about location wise or premise?
The process is the same other than it's all to do with the scoping visit. This
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is where we go out with a tape measure to see if things fit. So if somebody
is buying a Post Office as is and there's no refurbishment requirement then
it's pretty straightforward. If it's something that we need to build then we're
going into a building site and we haven't, you know, we'd work with them. So
we'd specify and we'd give them the drawings and the requirements and this
is what you'd need to build. But other than that the processes are exactly
the same in terms of everything.
Victoria
Who decides that there is a role that needs to be advertised for, as in, that
there's a vacancy or that you're going to continue having a Post Office in that
location or whether or not there might need to be a new one somewhere?
Angela
So that's a combination and that has changed. So when I was head of
Network Services that was my decision and we'd have a current network and
we have a remit government shares, we have to maintain the network at the
11,500 and it was, it has always been 11,500 as far as I can remember, well,
no that's not true. When we secured the first funding from government to do
the network change programme which would have been around, oh gosh
when was this going to be...we did...probably about 15 years ago probably.
That funding, first of all the funding came with the remit that we had to
maintain the network at, it couldn't drop below 11,500. We were probably
running at 12,000 odd at that point so it wasn't a difficult one, you know. So
what we've got is we've got, and in that came criteria of access criteria. Soa
percentage of the population had to live within three miles of a Post Office
and within one mile of a Post Office and stuff like that. So that in itself was
the starting position that drove kind of the size of the network. And then we
have a modelling team that use some fancy software to say, you know,
these are where we should be having, what's the opportunity for instance.
So we would get approached by people to say "I'm buying a shop here I'd
like a Post Office will you come and have a look at it." so there was a bit of a
model that we used to say whether (1) it would be viable or whether we
would be poaching business from other Post Offices or whether it was a
good opportunity. But it basically came down to decision of mine, it was my
decision of whether I actually went with it or not based on using all that data
to input it. So there are, I'm not sure where the decision point now, so Pam
Heep runs that team now. Mark Ellis is my equivalent in that team and she
works for him but there is a decision matrix to support all of that stuff.
Victoria
Ok.
Angela
John Breedon will give you a view on that as well. Because when they
assess against suitability, so when you get more than one applicant there's a
decision matrix around, and there's certain criteria that has different weight
in locations, it is quite heavy weighted one in there.
Victoria
Do you think that, you said about suitability. Do you think that it's robust
about the checking that goes into people that take on branches?
Angela
Depends what level, you know, the checking. So we do the CRB tests and
we do the credit worthy checking. So as much as we can we get a view on
financial stability and then we, against their business plan we test the
strength of that business plan around "are they being very optimistic in terms
of.." because anybody can make a business plan work, it's just whether the
figures you put in are credible and then we'd look at, "this is your
remuneration, you've got this number of staff, what hourly rates are you
paying them?" This is before minimum wage came in but I remember
minimum wage wasn't in when I was doing some of the stuff and just really
getting under the skin of right, so actually that means you're going to make
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£10 profit a year is that really what you want to do?
So seriously this is some of the conversations and it depends whether they
took themselves as, you know, some put themselves as receiving a wage,
others just took themselves as receiving the profit. Because it depends on
what their accountant told them to do it because it's better to take the profit
than to be on the payroll. Whenever you had the interviews it very much
depended upon what type of business they've had, what type of business
person they were and how good their accountant was. And what we always
insisted that they couldn't do is they couldn't bring their accountant to their
interview. Because we wanted to make sure that they understood their
business plan, rather than the person that put it together. Because
sometimes we knew the person had put it together but if they couldn't’, I
actually rejected people on the fact that they couldn't give me confidence
that they understood their business plan. And therefore I wouldn't take a risk
on them.
Victoria That's actually something I was going to ask you about the interviews about
whether or not multiple people ever attended interviews or whether it was
always just the one..
Angela There was never...so there would be some post offices that would only ever
attract one applicant, ok, and that very much depends on location
and...because some of these are not, heavy, overnight benefit areas where
you are not, with the best will in the world, you are not going to get a great
retail going because people live hand to mouth and stuff. So it very much
depended on it. And it very much depended on where in the country, as I
said Cardiff was very buoyant in those days. And then we had the economic
downturn and then we started sometimes to get one on ones, and that
became difficult. And it became difficult when you refused that person and
you knew the other person wanted to leave, but actually my take, my view on
this, and this is what we as a business operated on, the responsibility is the
person coming in not the person going out. And the reason I say that is, it's
about viability of that business going forward. So interestingly so when we
would have three applicants for instance and each produced a business plan
and each of them might have agreed a different sale price for the business
with the individual and I might have appointed the person who had negotiate
the lowest price for that business, and I remember a postmaster saying to
me "Can you appoint that one because he's going to pay me more" and I'm
like "no, I'll do whatever is the right thing to do on the day".
And this is sometimes, you know, we were always open to.. and the way we
built out our processes was always about I think two people interviewing
because we were always open to being accused of taking backhanders, you
know, some people would come to me and say, I'd have my security team
come into me sometimes and say if the contract's advised them to check
somebody, we'd have the finger pointed and I'd have to give the ok for them
to go and do, you know, look into their finances and see what we think
because, you know, it's to be totally transparent. But that is how we built the
processes to make sure that we covered ourselves in terms of how we
appointed. Likewise I had two applicants for this one branch in Cardiff one
day, one year, and I interviewed and I went with obviously one and one
didn't get it and he sent a letter in challenging, he actually wrote into me
saying that I was racist, because he was} and I didn't give him the post
office and that unless I changed my decision he was going to bring a case
against me. So I wrote back and said, you know, everything is based on
merit and cas luff and Mr Patel was the successful applicant, because
they were both; and he didn't know that. So I was not being racist at
all! You know be e Clearly, but he didn't know it, it was the best letter I
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have written actually! Mr Patel was the successful applicant.
Victoria
rather than
ecause then
Background laughing. I like the way that you gave his nai
saying and the applicant that was successful was also! GR'
that could be open to saying that that was a racism thing.
Angela
It was never, for me it was never about race, it never is about race. It's
about, the best person for the job. But it was just one of those, the way he
comes again he isn’t perfect
Mr Patel was a fantastic postmaster by the way, he ended up having about
five post offices in the end, he was great. Really good.
Victoria
A good appointment
Angela
A good appointment, absolutely.
Victoria
We're covering off quite a lot of these without me asking which is good.
There is a question about considerations that are taken into account when
deciding who to appoint. In particular, do they need to have worked in a post
office before, and I know the answer to that is no but how important is that,
or how important was that to you?
Angela
Whether they had worked in post office before? How important was it..um?
It could be important but for both sides of the argument. So it very much
depends, so I have actually been in situations where I have had two or three
applicants and I've appointed the one that has no post office experience over
ones that have had post office experience because it's not necessarily post
office experience I am looking for, you can train post office, it's the business
acumen and whether they are able to run a successful business. Some of
our worst appointments have been postmasters have been ex-post office as
in directly managed people, because they try to run an agency branch as
they run a directly managed branch and it's not the same. You haven't got to
pay your own bills when you are running it on behalf of Post Office, you
haven't got to manage your own accounts, you haven't got to look at your
profit margin, you just take home your pay at the end of the day. So it can
be very different, it depends on the individual rather than it's not just one
thing it's the whole piece.
Victoria
In a situation where they're replacing somebody, so there's the [01:05:23]
incumbent post master, do you take into account at all the relationship they
have with that current postmaster, if they've got one? Sorry I am just
thinking of a situation where father and son or...?
Angela
No. So the only, it comes down to the business case, it comes down to the
application, you know, it's based on merit. The advantage of family
transfers, because we've had a different process for family transfers is that
for them we never advertised a vacancy.
Victoria
Ah, ok.
Angela
So there as a clause that said "if it's a family transfer and it's done for no
financial gain", then, you know it was almost, providing they were suitable, it
was pretty much a done deal then.
Victoria
Oh ok.
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Angela And it actually was interesting because when I started in that role and
interviewing myself, I did get a bit of push back because apparently I was
giving the applicants a bit too much of a hard workout given that you know it
was their father's business, they knew everything and I wasn't prepared to
take them at face value. So I just treated everybody as individuals and went
through the process.
Victoria That seems fairer.
Angela Yeah
Victoria It would be quite useful, I am just looking at this bit to see which terms of the
contracts were discussed. If you do still have your copy and you could tell
us which clauses you definitely used to talk about that would be really
helpful.
Angela Yep.
Pause, looking through papers, background talking
Victoria We were just saying how interesting.
Angela What's that?
Victoria What you're telling us!
Angela Oh I see, I thought .
Victoria And would it have looked like that when they were given it, or was that a
special one for people...
Angela No, it's the same contract. It isn't more [01:07:55] it used to be we went for
the logo as a giveaway in terms of the timelines, so the oldest logo was, it
had what we called tramlines so the green round there was the double
yellow line.
Victoria Ok.
Angela Going round there and this is, I forget what the revised version of this is.
And there was no green man around our logo so it depended on where it
was. But obviously is quite well used and I think...! will share this because
it's somebody else's writing on there as well as mine
So there were some sections which I will have to remind myself now
because. So there is one around [1 08-27] REUSE UIRRSEUGEDE
There was the contract status, yeah, just basically..
Victoria So section 1.1
Angela So the contract is a contract for services and we used to run through that
and this is not a contract of employment and was the first thing where we
used to start. I used to have a crib sheet actually, I haven't got any longer,
maintaining the premises, we used to cover that, you must provide and
maintain at his own expense reasonable office accommodation we used to
go through what that means and how we would verify that, you know we
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used to drop into practically what that would look like on a visiting schedule.
Personal service is always one we always covered and that's you know you
don't have to be there but that does not negate your responsibility under the
terms of the contract and therefore..yep..and to make sure that they fully
remembered that. With the sections, typically covers sick absence and stuff
and that's to make sure they knew what they were doing and the absence
stuff as well I would cover, yeah, which is a again personal service
[flicking through pages]
The responsibility for cash and stock so this is where we get into section 12,
I would literally go through all of that. And around how we did the balance
and stuff and then we'd get onto losses, ok? Responsible for all losses
whether it's incurred by yourself or your staff members, we'd go through all
of that and they might ask me more questions around that and I would you
know delve into that and talk about gains as well. So if you have a gain so
what we'll say is right so "you are, you can withdraw them but bear in mind
that that could come back because if you have a gain like you have a loss
then it's because you've usually made an error". So what we always used to
recommend you do is put that money in an envelope and keep it in the safe
and you just keep that. Because typically that would come back which is
where that, you know we always went into that in quite a lot of detail. This an
ongoing bit [01:10:36]
Post Office development fund. I have secured some money from Welsh
Government to invest in post offices for them and I used to run through
letting them know...
So we used to cover, we would definitely go into the systems one which is
section 15. Around you know what that looked like and what they were
meant to do around the P250 and telling when they take on new people,
what that looks like as well. Always went through that and particularly
around the CRB checks. And the other thing I would particularly use to go
into is one around the Official Secrets Act which I know sounds really archaic
ok, but important, particularly because these are very often the applicant
would come from within the community and therefore we needed to really
instil in people the importance of, "this is data you cannot share". You see
stuff that you would never see and therefore, you know, you have to keep
things confidential and we would always go through that.
Victoria Was it for things like benefits and things like that that were particularly...
Angela Yeah, so even just like the amounts of balance they've got in their accounts,
in those days you used to have national savings...the balance used to be on
there you could see how much they were putting in every month. Whereas
now all you see is in the machine and it's gone.
Victoria Yeah, ok
Angela So its things, you know..and depending on, I always remember going into
one political activities because there was somebody who, he was a
councillor and he was trying to run for election and I had to point out under
the terms of the contract that that's not, you cannot use your office to, you
know propaganda and stuff, it was one of those things as well so we'd run
through that. But we pretty much would walk through a number of these and
then I'd walk through around the losses, how you need to make good and
that you couldn't use that money for anything else other than Post Office,
you know...
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Victoria
That's really helpful, is it in 12?
Angela
Yes, it's under there. I am trying to look and see what else they've got in
here.. So this is why, you know when we... so this was something as you
can see is very worn document, this is something we would take in and we
used to say "this is the postmaster's contract. On appointment we will send
you, there will be one of these in branch, and we will send you one. If you've
got any queries just let me know and I'll get you one". Ok? So that was
really important. What I didn't do is I didn't rely on them, because what
should have happened is that the outgoing postmaster would make sure that
the incoming postmaster knew what they were taking on. And typically that
didn't always happen so what we did, and this wasn't just what I did, we all
did this, it was standard practice, we all got into a way of, these are the
things we would cover, ok, and we would produce these particulars that we'd
go through and you'd made sure that you'd covered all of these things off
with them just to make sure.
Victoria
Because that's really important because one of the things obviously they are
saying is "I never saw my contract, I don't know what..."
Angela
Yeah and, whether they ever referred to it is a different matter. They all had
a contract and they all had the walk through the key sections of them and
when they came to take on their branch on the transfer day, they'd signed to
say they had had a copy of this and that they were actually aware of these
particular clauses in there so it's one of those you know. Memory is a difficult
thing sometimes isn't it people remember the bits they want to remember so
it's always a difficult one.
22 you can imagine ??
Angela If you think about this a little document it's a very easy read.
Victoria Yes its nicely written
Angela I remember when I came into this role, I had just come out of branch and I
had never had to do anything like this, I used to think oh god ive got in and
I've got to read so I literally took this and just read it from cover to cover and
I thought well I understand it so its not a problem.
Victoria It's a lot less legalistic than the more recent contracts
Angela Absolutely
Victoria But they need to be because of the wiggles that people have done under
that one.
Angela Depending on as I was managing contracts with people then I would
obviously when I would be writing letters I would refer to different clauses.
Victoria So you would use that document a lot?
Angela Oh yes. I used to precautiously suspend people myself and we would have
standard templates and I would make sure that whatever I was referring to I
put the right section and the right paragraph and all of that kind of stuff in
there. So this is key. This is part of the interview pack, we just run though it
all.
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Victoria Well that has just answered a load of questions that I had written down
there. I have got a section about the signing on contracts so we have just
discussed that so was it physically on the morning of hand over that they
would sign the contract
Angela No they sign a branch usually unless there were some problems or they
claim they never had it in advance and stuff like that because one of the
other things I havent said here is what we always tell postmasters is that
they should take their own legal advice because this is a legal transaction
Victoria Was that just you or was that everybody?
Angela No we all did. It was one of those things that when you were trained to come
in and do this you were told and we used to include it on letters as well. Post
Office strongly recommends that you take on independent legal advice and
all that kind of stuff it was always the caveat in all the letters and people
used to come in and I would say have you, and they would say no I cant do
that. I can point you to certain points in the contact but I strongly recommend
you take legal advice. I couldn't force them to.
Victoria No and also they are not employees, its business to business
Angela Exactly, I was always very mindful of look you are an independent business
person but I would strongly recommend you do this but clearly it is entirely
up to you and that was always where my conversation was with people.
Victoria That's a good way of putting it because that's a things that falls perhaps on
the side of the employee side of that. Its another thing we could point to.
Angela Yes, we are always very cautious not to step into that employee relationship.
Other than the anomalies that I said are in the contract anyway.
Victoria So you said there would be a copy of that in the branch and they would be
sent one.
Angela Yes but it was a printed version.
Victoria A printed version, so the nice bound one like that would be in the branch but
a like photocopy version would be sent to them along with the
acknowledgement of appointment
Angela Yes
Victoria And they would be given a copy of that
Angela If the acknowledgement hadn't gone back into the centre by the time we
were transferring the contract that's when we had that onsite to do.
Victoria Okay
Angela So they had it in advance if they failed to return it, so what we wouldn't do
we wouldn't let them take over that part if they hadn’t signed the contract.
Victoria Right and was that something everyone did.
Angela Yes it was part of the audit, so when the audit pack went out they might have
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a copy in there to make sure they have signed it before they actually started
counting the cash.
Victoria
I see so people who were saying that they didn’t ever have one, that
probably isn’t correct.
Angela
The problem we have is we can't locate some of that information that’s our
problem.
Victoria
What was the process of storing the contracts then
Angela
They were all stored in.. it was paper and we still have got a building in
Leeds it's called the markets there is a DMB on the ground floor but we had
like three floors in the basement there was about 120 filing cabinets that I did
visit a number of times and it was full of dampness and rats and stuff. You
can imagine I was the person they hated the most because when I took over
that world and they showed me what it was and I pulled a few contracts out
and the state they were in, there was not order to them at all. So I said we
need to sort them all so I made them go through every single one.
Victoria
I remember talking to some of them when that was happening.
Angela
So I made them go through every single one and I pulled together a front
cover, this is what needs to be in this file and then they had to go through
everyone and sift it and to make sure they had the right documentation and
then I had them make it electronic then so we had this transition but they
hated me because it was downstairs and it wasn’t pleasant actually as they
had to work. So actually dodge involving agency staff. I didn’t mind as long
as it was done properly but it wasn’t as bad as you think. I did allow them to
have an hour on and then an hour off. Very reasonable but the piece of work
needed to be done.
Victoria
I remember stories about a cupboard and a basement and things like that.
Angela
So when I closed the admin site and it transferred into to trust so all the files
are now in Chesterfield and obviously the rest of the archived stuff is well it
was with Iron Mountain who its with now, its called something else. The
other company is where we store it now.
Victoria
Its not Boxset
Angela
I think it is actually
Victoria
Okay, Boxset has been talked about. How are post masters informed about
changed to terms and conditions on new products.
Angela
In writing, Paul Inwood used to write them and still writes them so he will
give you all the information on that.
Victoria
That's the end of that.
Angela
Sorry in writing but also usually we have had the discussion with the fed so
we weren't necessarily obliged to consult with them but any changes that we
made we would always do in conjunction with or at least give them a heads
up or they usually try to weave it into a pay negotiation of some kind but yes
it was always done through that.
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Victoria
Okay so this is jumping round a bit but something that we touched on before
was dishonesty and false accounting and I have been asking people why in
their view if they do think this is the case signing off false account is
dishonest and what impact it has on Post Office.
Angela
Sorry what are you asking me?
Victoria
Why it's dishonest and what impact it has on Post Office. I know by the look
on your face you are horrified im even asking you but there is some sort of
suggestion..
Talking over each other — unable to hear
Victoria
There is some sort of suggestion that there is two sort of levels to false
accounting there is the sort of criminal one and there is the one where you
are just doing it to kind of balance your books and its fine and its sort of
that... that's the reaction I would like to get from you.
Angela
Okay, so why is it dishonest. Its dishonest because it is a criminal activity
first of all and it is coloured under the theft act. Unfortunately some people
think that it is white collar crime and therefore it doesn’t count, clearly that is
not the case. At the very glass route level, signing off and saying that I
declare that I have £100,000 here when I don't is clearly wrong. Especially
when they're in the status of trust not just with us Post Office in terms of the
trust that we put in the branch, the fact that in their community. There is a
certain status that goes with being a postmaster and it is held in very high
regard and we on behalf of clients trade on our image of trust and integrity
and if you can trust your Post Office in the UK who in the hell can you trust
so it is all that. Now when I have had conversations with postmasters
sometimes they don't see it as being wrong let alone a criminal activity until I
actually tell them what the consequences could be. I remember going to see
a couple in London/ Wimbledon way, he came into the mediation scheme
and wanted to see me. I went to see him and wife, lovely couple, he was the
postmaster she had been working in the government or something. He was
a good postmaster actually running a good business and then started to get
some losses and in his mind they weren't genuine losses therefore he didn't
feel the need or he would refuse on the back of because it weren't ?? to put
the money in and we terminated his contract on the back of it, we didn’t take
any proceedings against him and then when I sat with him and just talked it
through and explained it, because he was feeling really hard done by the fact
that he can no longer work in the Post Office that he built up, his wife had
given up her job to become the post mi: 0 that on the face of it they
could still have that, they were again an icouple but in the community
keep that level of respect. It destroyed him, as an individual he was totally
destroyed and there was talk in the community but from his own perspective
he had brought shame on himself and his family. I mean the guy was in tears
this was 7 years after the event when I say with him he was in tears and his
wife. What I did talk to him about the fact that it is criminal activity and
actually we could have prosecuted you for it but we chose not to. He kind of
got the sense of the seriousness of it at that point but he had been festering
on that for 7 years. Which comes back to my point earlier about we didn't
really explain some of the things at the time in detail that we could have I
think you know because we weren't obliged to do so and we didn't see that
as our role to do so. In fact my view was always that if we could give the
explanation then why wouldn't we and if we could try and make people
understand why wouldn't we and actually to a certain degree and this always
gets played to me from my first working groups with the JFSA is in giving the
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explanation and trying to do that we allow the individuals to get some kind of
closure on that incident and trust me in a number of these cases it is so
dramatically changed their lives. Not in the good sense at all. So I do take
this very seriously and when you approach anything in this situation its
difficult because I have a job to do in as much I am here to do a particular
thing and if you breach the contract I need to deal with that doesn’t mean I
don't treat you as a human being, it doesn’t mean I don’t give you the
respect that goes with that and it doesn’t mean I need to be aggressive or
anything else because I am not going to be but I am clearly going to be
assertive in my position as this is what the position is. Sometimes it's the
way you do it as opposed to what you do. Its really important.
Victoria
You mentioned that in that case he hadn't actually been prosecuted but
obviously what he had done which was false accounting so are there any
guidelines around that when you view that something is dishonest or when
you think that it
Angela — 1.27.39
2? we always do that. Typically it comes from an audit, the audit is done and
I described that to you earlier and then you have the contract advisors so the
contract advisors decision to terminate contract sometimes it is done in
parallel with criminal proceedings but it doesn’t stop us doing that so we
have terminated contracts even though we know as we have sufficient
information to be able to terminate the contract anyway so we do that
independently but we do then tell the postmaster at the time but that does
not mean that we are not taking but then the decision whether we do actually
take the criminal proceedings with them is subject to a separate review so
checking the entering and the pace and all that kind of stuff. All that kind of
stuff is all part of that process and again that decision to go down that route
is not taken lightly and that would always be done in conjunction with general
counsel so Jane McCloud as is today and all her predecessors would have
that conversation with a security team and agree
Victoria
In every case?
Angela
Yes
Victoria
Really, wow
Angela
Whether we agree to go that way or not. So it was always at that legal level
Victoria
Okay so that is interesting because there used to be obviously lots of them
Angela
Yes, well it was never that many, when you think of it as a percentage of
what we were dealing with it was never that many so I think at the height we
were at 200 a year.
Victoria
That sounds like a lot though
Angela
But when you have got a population of over the years, when I started
working in Post Office we had 22,000 Post Offices and we have a 10% ??
every year
Victoria
Yes
Angela
Most of our postmaster are very honest people and given where we are we
don't have very many situations where we have to go into that level of detail
but unfortunately, so our postmasters are very representative population in
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terms of UK make-up, in terms of all ages, nationalities everything so given
that is the case you would expect to have some kind of representation of
people who get themselves in to difficulty because I genuinely believe that
no one comes in with a view to steal from Post Office, circumstances happen
and they find themselves in a situation where you know where you have a
drawer full of money and some pressures they get tempted in that way and
there are some very sad situations. I mean I worked in branch and the thing I
always used to say to people. I mean I worked in branch when it was millions
of pounds and when you were handling cash it was oh can I have £10,000,
can I have £20,000 but at the point you saw £10,000 as a car now I am
starting to worry now because you are now seeing it as money as appose to
a project or a commodity or something because it was just money. To us it
was just £10,000, I need £20,000 but that's not a car
Victoria
No it's not your money is it?
Angela
Exactly at the point of which and this is interesting actually, I remember a
case where when we used to YTS's which are probably way before your
time but youth training schemes
Victoria
Not way before my time
Angela
So we used to recruit and what we used to do was put some YTS people
into agency branches and basically it is free labour for them because we
paid whatever it was £20 a week in those days and I remember going to one
branch and postmaster turns round and says Angela can I have a chat as I
think I have got a problem and she started to suffer losses that she has
never before so I went and sat with her and I said why do you think it's this
girl and she said because I found this and what she found was this young girl
who had been working out all of that monthly outgoings and stuff and that
was the level of money that she was losing. So there was a shortfall, so she
had a £200 shortfall she was losing £200 a week so it was like.. so at the
point you don’t see money.. when you see money as money as opposed to
just paper we potentially have a problem.
Victoria
That's really interesting way of looking at it actually. It is that sort of colour
that makes things interesting and makes the witness statements memorable.
Angela
33 years, amazing memory
Victoria
I have got a question about whether.. im not sure if it's for you but how did
Post Office detect problems in Horizon so where there are weaknesses?
What methods of error detection?
Angela — 1.33.14
So I think you need to pick that up with ??. they do some technical
maintenance pieces for us so I wouldn't want to cover that as im not close
enough to that detail but we do have some proactive maintenance kind of
sweep stuff that they do
Victoria
The final one I thought I would ask you about is temporary substitute but I
don't know.. im going to speak to John Breedon about that but I don’t know
whether or not it something that you were involved in? so what is the
process for appointing them? What qualifications do they need? What do
you think about that sort of thing?
Angela
So temporary sub masters typically came up when we had an audit situation
and we actually temporary suspended not always because if someone went
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bankrupt so whenever we had a situation where we didn’t have a postmaster
in there we would look to put a temporary postmaster in. we had a particular
role to do that, at the height we had a number of those, we took that role out
a couple of years ago but we have put it back in actually because we are
having some issues. So our loss levels are quite high at the moment which I
mentioned earlier. There is a defined process, John Breedon will be able to
give it to you but what we always did was applied not the same degree in
terms of the financial bit because there was financial consideration as in
terms of the only consideration was could they reach an agreement with the
incumbent around using the premises and that's what we used to do. We
have changed that slightly now in that we also pay them an amount of
money. Under the mains contract where we have stepping rights we have
built that in to say we will pay X amount of money to cover the use. I cant
remember the terms but it’s the only contract we have got stepping rights in.
Victoria
And franchise agreement
Angela
Yes, have we got any franchise agreement left?
Victoria
I have no idea but you did have them as I used to advise on them and that
was an issue
Angela
We had about 20 franchise agreements at the height I think but I wasn’t
involved in that space. It was me that put stepping rights in to the mains
contracts on the back of looking to take..
Victoria
It makes it much more of a business.
Angela
Its clean. You know everyone know exactly.. so there is a process and it was
just a case of... but there is about suitability including they would have to be
registered as an assistant, we also knew if they had the TLB checks and all
that kind of stuff and typically they were people that we used frequently and
there are a couple of companies now that have set themselves up just to do
that, like Nero's and the Patels. There is a few of them. The difficult
conversation was always when we suspended the postmaster and he
wanted his wife or husband and that was always difficult. Now we did have
at one point there was almost an unwritten rule that we wouldn't allow the
husband or wife to take over and I did challenge that and I changed it so
unless they were suspected to be involved in that situation then we shouldn't
have not.
Victoria
When you say they unless the husband or wife was suspected as well
Angela
Whether they were proposing to become the tenant so unless we had
suspicions
Victoria
About them specifically?
Angela
Yes because it could be subject to an investigation and that was always a
difficult one because we didn't necessarily want to say they were part of the
investigation because it was always a difficult one.
Victoria
Oh yes I do remember discussions about that.
Angela
Which is why I think people defaulted to we can't do it. I did allow in a couple
of cases there has been a wife or whatever it might be did actually go in and
take that on and in doing that we do tech the investment or circumstance so
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it is a difficult call actually and I did probably stick my neck out a couple of
times but it was fine, it all worked out it was the right decision to make in the
process. I say that was the only consideration there but it is quite a straight
forward process, it is quite easy, it is basically you do the transcript on site,
take over responsibility of cash and stock. Make sure all the keys they have
got the spare set of keys, the alarm codes are changed. You know all that
kind of stuff and in some cases we even insisted that they had the locks
changed, you know if we had the suspicion we would have the locks
changed and even change the safe lock as well sometimes so it is all nicely
defined and john will give you that.
Victoria And we can talk to him about the contract presumably for that as well.
Angela Basically they are the same type of contract.
Victoria Okay
Angela They are responsible for the losses and all that. Somebody is on the
premises and things
Victoria It's just a shorter version
Angela So I think we have a streamlined document that we get them to sign
Victoria Yes I have seen it. as I understand it temps are on 7 day notice
Angela Yes
Victoria Why is that necessary? From your point of view why was it necessary that
they be on 7 day notice?
Angela As oppose to what less or more?
Victoria More, less everything.
Angela Well we didn’t want to put them on more because we didn’t want to tie
ourselves unnecessary into paying more but clearly we did need to have
warning if they wanted to leave or we wanted to get rid of them which is
about being reasonable. A week is long enough for us to get arrangements
into place and do an audit and do that kind of stuff. Normally they would give
us longer notice and we would give them longer notice where we could but
that was the minimum amount of time we needed to put into the contract.
Victoria Okay and presumably also because the sub postmaster might be reinstated?
Angela Yes that's what I mean about incurring additional cost
Victoria Oh because you would have to pay them for the notice period even though
the sub postmaster was reinstated.
Angela Yes so it would give us the flexibility to do that because in the course of
suspension that's a very fluid process so whilst we have given deadlines in
terms of 2? guidance in terms of we would expect it to be no longer than this
length of time. It very much depends on what the level of the investigation is,
how cooperative the post master is because they can be very difficult and in
some cases they think if I don’t attend the interview then they can't terminate
my contract. Which is not the case because we have other ways of doing
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that. It's a bizarre in some cases as why would you behave that way
because all the time this is you are suspended without pay and actually you
could be running down your business. In some cases where they don’t allow
us to put a temp in, its closed in some cases, it's difficult to get into their
heads. I don’t ever try actually because sometimes I don’t want to be in
someone else's head but it’s a difficult one to just rationalise sometimes
Victoria
So we have got a question here about obviously there isn't a rigorous
recruitment process for temps in the same way as there might be for a
permanent appointment.
Angela
It is rigorous
Victoria
It is rigorous because they have gone through the same vetting
Angela
Yes but It is rigorous in terms of the conditions that they have to be held
accountable for. What's not as rigorous is the financial consideration as
there isn’t one so the rigger around the recruitment for permanent
appointment is that it is very much about making sure that financially it’s a
sound business but isn’t that consideration for the temp post master so if it’s
a temp post master that we havent used before we would have an interview
with them, if it is someone that we have used routinely then we would just
agree terms with them and we still on the temp sub post masters make sure
that they are up to speed on training, they have to do all the same training,
compliance checking all that because if they don’t do that we cant use them.
So sorry there is that level of rigger, that’s just me not explaining it properly
but it is just the financial bit.
Victoria
And that’s because they are effectively carrying on in the same premises
and the same sort of business
Angela
So what they have is an agreement with the existing that they will pay out X
amount of rent and they get total use of that so that is the agreement so that
the only bit, that one agreement we have got in place with the incumbent.
Okay now we are happy. We make sure that they have got sufficient notice
period in that as well so that you know they aren't being kicked out overnight.
So there is a rigger around it in there that gives us confidence that we have
got that sufficiently well documented and considered to give us the flexibility
to be able to operate and maintain that service without tying ourselves up in
notes in terms of having a 6 month notice period or something. Well even
though this is only 3 months anyway, that’s why we do it, to have that
flexibility because it is meant to be temporary
Mandy
I was going to say in terms of that temporary part of it how long would the
temps in plan stay in place and at what point would it go from being a
temporary situation to a long term commitment.
Angela
So temps, the longest servicing temp I came across is 12 years. Which was
silly so at what point do they become a permanent. So it very much depends.
on the situation there are some that are temps and like to be temps and
there are some that go into temps and stay there, sometimes we forget
about that half the time and typically we pay them more that the going rate
which is why they are keen to stay.
Victoria
Is that like a substitute teacher type scenario as you just come in.
Angela
Well we agree with them. So say remuneration for a branch would be
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£20,000 and I am thinking about the smaller branches so they might say well
I will do it for £25,000 we don’t banter because its short term and that is with
no investment from them so it's a good deal. So when I came into the
network role I started scrubbing up a lot of things and that's one of that.
Sorry my understanding of temporary is not 12 years.
Victoria
Laughter
Angela
I then worked really hard to get that down so in some cases I went to some
and say I am going to advertise this now and then someone interested will
come through the proper recruitment process so where did that temp
situation go back it either went back to the incumbent or if we terminated the
contract then clearly we would go back into advertising that. The temp might
apply the temp might not apply but they would be in with the rest of the
population in terms of.. and we would have some temp agents that when
they have come into the application process for a particular branch and they
have not got through the process because their business case didn’t stack
up and now as an individual competence wise they are good but it wasn’t
just financially sound and we refuse then
Victoria
That ties nicely in with your example about £20,000 and £25,000 because
they wouldn't have to consider that. They would just retrospectively being
paid. I think that might be my last question. It is my last question unless there
is anything else you would like to tell us that we havent already covered.
Angela
No I could tell you loads more but im not going to. I will save that for another
day, no that's fine as long as you have got the information that need from me
because obviously I have got loads of information in my head but it's really
what you want for that and then obviously there will be separate iterations
around and I expecting to see all the witness statements at some point
Victoria
Yes and I think what is quite useful is because you know so much about it for
such a long period of time it's quite good that you have been able to
emphasise which people we should be seeing because some of them we
havent arranged to see yet so we will do.
Angela
Unfortunately some of the ones I would have, have left of late
Victoria
I know, it does because one of the things that we are going to be thinking
about obviously is whether or not we need to contact certain people so we
will make sure to discuss that with you because if you have got information
like you were saying about Lyn Norbury that’s a careful approach that would
be required so we need help from you with that.
Angela
Yes I would need to reach out to her first actually. Clearly we had a list of
people through mediation the go to people and what I did put on Andy's
radar is you know when people weren't going into consultation at this
redundancy that we got as much information from them as we could. As ever
until you get in the depths of it, you don’t know exactly what you need to
know
Victoria
And also what is happening now is we are not trying to get information from
you about all of the case its just specific issues that we are going to be
dealing with at this trial in November so if it got to a situation where we were
dealing with more than that obviously there is a lot more we could ask about
that. So there are large bits we havent asked you about.
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Angela That's okay because im part of the litigation steering group anyway.
Victoria I did know that.
Angela Im pretty much in the space so that's good.
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