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Witness Name: Mr. Timothy Vause
Statement No: WITN05680100
Dated: 20/02/2023
THE POST OFFICE HORIZON INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY VAUSE
I, Timothy Vause, will say as follows:
INTRODUCTION
1. This statement is in response to the request for information in
accordance with Rule 9 of the Inquiry Rules 2006. The contents of the
statement are regarding matters falling within Phases 2 and 3 of the Post
Office Horizon Inquiry.
BACKGROUND
2. Ijoined Post Office Limited [POL] in July 1984, starting as a Postal Officer at
Harrogate Crown Post Office. The role started with a six-week training course
after which I commenced work behind the main post office counter.
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3.
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In addition to working behind the post office counter there were several back-
office roles that I also learnt to do over the years that followed. These included
working in the Cash Bureau taking in cash deposits from local businesses,
supplying them with change, resetting Franking Machines, and supplying
postal officers on the Harrogate branch counter with their requirements for
cash at the start of each day.
I also worked in the Philatelic Bureau, Returned Letters Branch which dealt
with mail that could not be delivered and Television Licence Enquiries which
carried out home visits to check if TV licences were held.
I spent some time in the Cash Office at Harrogate Post Office sending sub
post offices in the Harrogate post code region their weekly stock orders of
stamps, postal orders, car tax discs and cash/coin etc.
I also completed the main cash account for Harrogate Post office and over
time became a counter tutor for new entrants into the postal officer role. This
involved sitting behind new starters for the first few weeks and helping them
with any issues they had with transactions.
I worked at several other Crown office counters, providing cover for
annual leave and sick absence.
In 1997 I had a short secondment to a new team that were looking at
automating the Post Office Counter and spent a short period drafting test
scripts for the Testing Team based in Borough High Street in London.
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9. Shortly after I had a secondment to the Post Office Automation Team which
involved fitting Automated Payment Terminals in sub post offices in the
North East. Automated Payment Terminals provided a method of taking
payments for Utilities.
10.A further secondment followed in 1999 to the Horizon Programme. This role
was a temporary promotion from Postal Officer to Counter Manager 2. The role
was based at the Fujitsu offices in Feltham, Middlesex. During this time, I
worked with Fujitsu and colleagues from Post Office Ltd and the Department of
Work and Pensions on the processes and procedures for using the Horizon
system which were documented in Processes and Procedures Descriptions
and subsequently documented in the Horizon System User Guides.
11.In 2001, I was successful at interview and took a permanent post as a Change
Implementation Analyst in Business Service Management based in Dearne
Valley, in South Yorkshire. This was at Counter Manager 3 level. The role
primarily dealt with Horizon systemchanges and drafting and publishing
internal communications articles in the POL production of ‘Counter News’.
Articles were produced in conjunction with Product Managers and the Intemal
Communications Team. This publication was distributed to both Crown ad
Sub Post Offices and provided articles on Post Office products and where
applicable, how to transact them on the Horizon system.
12.As a Change ImplementationAnalyst, the role would also require me to
review changes such as Change Control Notes (ref 1). CCNs would be
distributed to various stakeholders for comment / acceptance.The purpose of
my review was to identify if theproposed change wouldimpact on user
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documentation and require any changes to controlled documents such as the
Horizon System User Guide. I do not recall the background to CCNO965 but in
my response within the CCNI have identified that the change, if implemented,
would require an update to userdocumentation.
13.In 2003 I was promoted to the role of Problem Manager [Counter Manager
2]. Still working in Business Service Management at Dearne Valley the role
was responsible for the management of business continuity related problems
and identification of service improvements. For example, it was identified
that if there was a central system failure disrupting the availability of the
Horizon system, members of the public using the Post Office Card Account
would not be able to get access to benefits so a manual work around was
devised and put in place to ensure an interim payment could be made to
Post Office Card Account holders.
14. In 2004 I was promoted to the role of Business Continuity Manager [Counter
Manager 4]. In this role I worked with both internal teams and external
suppliers of IT systems to Post Office Ltd such as Fujitsu, EDS, IBM and
Alliance and Leicester, to ensure business continuity plans were in placeand
appropriately tested. The scope of the testing would include validation of
critical systems’ resilience and range from single component failure testing
to full data centre failover and recovery. IT server component resilience was
tested periodically by Fujitsu to ensure there were no single points of failure
and that primary components would failover to secondary components
without impact to service. These tests were not witnessed but were reported
on by Fujitsu. Data centre failover tests were on a larger scale and would
include all IT components active in the primary data centre being failed over
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to the secondary data centre. Data centre tests were witnessed by me on
site with the supplier.
15.In addition, business continuity plans were witness tested for the loss of
production and printing of the Post Office Card Account payment card, and
the loss of production printing of manual payment vehicles such as child
benefit books and the subsequent recovery or printing to alternate sites.
These tests were witnessed by me on site with the supplier.
16. The role also covered coordinating business continuity planning for industrial
action at post office counters and cash centres, and the development of the
Rapid Deployment Team. The Rapid Deployment Team was made up of
mostly volunteer non-operational POL staff that could be deployed to work on
Post Office Crown office counters all over the country in the event of
Industrial Action. A more specialised number of staff within the Rapid
Deployment Team was trained to work in secure cash delivery to cover
industrial action in cash centres and ensure the ongoing delivery of cash to
post office counters in the event of disputes, or other potential disruption
scenarios such as pandemic flu.
17. The scope of the role also included development of the POL Crisis
Management process. The purpose of the Crisis Management process
was to put in place a response process for dealing with unplanned events
such as the Buncefield explosion. The work included establishing a Crisis
Management Team made up of senior management representatives from
across POL that were suitably empowered to represent their business
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area in the event of an incident. A requirement of the Crisis Management
Team was that it could be invoked at short notice and outside normal
business hours, therefore the invocation process was tested on a regular
basis. The scope of invocation testing involved sending SMS text
messages to Crisis Management Team members both inside and outside
normal business hours in order to validate correct contact details were
held, that they could be contacted and that they would respond at short
notice.
18. Also included in the scope of the role was Pandemic Planning for Post
Office Ltd, and response to terrorist incidents such as the London terror
attacks and fuel supply disruption.
19. The role also included response and recovery from the Buncefield oil storage
depot disaster. POL had two sites located in the vicinity which were
impacted, requiring business continuity plans to be invoked.
20. The scope of the role also included reviewing established business
continuity plans such as the Horizon Service Desk Business Continuity Plan
(ref 2) which was reviewed on a regular basis to ensure the contents were
current and up to date. I was not involved in the operation or development of
the Horizon Service Desk, but believed it to be effective,
21.In my opinion business continuity was taken seriously at POL, was effective
and adhered to good industry practice. I did not have any concerns about
continuity planning.
22. During my time at Post Office Ltd I became a member of the Business
Continuity Institute and continue to hold membership. The Business
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Continuity Institute is the world’s leading institute for business
continuity and resilience professionals. It was established in 1994 and
has a global network of over 9000 members.
Advice and Assistance
23.My roles in POL did not have any direct contact with sub postmasters or
managers and assistants working in Post Offices, except during my time at
Harrogate. During this time, which was pre-Horizon, I did on a very small
number of occasions carry out sub postmaster training. This involved going to
new sub postmasters and providing them with some training on how to carry
out transactions and complete the weekly ‘balance’.
24.When I was seconded to the Automation Team, I had contact with sub
postmasters when I installed the terminal and showed them how to use it.
Again, this was pre-Horizon.
25.As a Change Implementation Analyst my role involved providing indirect
advice and assistance to post office counter staff, including sub
postmasters, via publications such as Counter News and Operational
Focus. These publications were used to inform post office counter staff
about changes to the Horizon system, such as changes to the position of
screen icons (ref 3) and Horizon System User Guide information updates
(ref 4). The publications were issued on a regular basis with Horizon
specific articles included an ad hoc basis.
26.In addition to the operational publications, Counter News and Operational
Focus, there was a Message Broadcast System which was used to send
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urgent operational messages to end-user Horizon system terminals.
Message contents were sent to Fujitsu and they would then distribute the
messages, which would be displayed on the Horizon system. The
message could be targeted at specific post office outlet types and have a
designated retention period. (Ref 5) is an example of a Message
Broadcast written by myself, but I do not recall the specific circumstances
behind why this message was sent. It appears to be associated with an
issue relating to benefits paid into and held in the Post Office Card
Account. Funds would be credited to the card account by the relevant
government agency so that the customer could withdraw funds by
presenting the card at the post office counter, replacing the need for a
pension / child benefit book.
Training
27.1 was not responsible for managing the contracts of sub postmasters.
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28. Any training I carried out for sub postmasters was pre-Horizon and was on the
manual processes and procedures — the training was limited as there was a
lot to learn in a very short time.
Errors or issues with Horizon system
29.1 was not aware of any issues with the Horizon system, other than things
like network connectivity issues or component failures at the data centre.
For example, where there were network issues this could impact system
availability for sub postmasters. Instances like this, would be notified into
the Helpdesk by the sub postmaster and assigned a problem manager
within Business Service Management to investigate. Network connectivity
issues were usually as a result of local issues, such as a severed cable
caused by roadworks. I was not involved in the management of these
failures.
30.Component failures at the data centre were managed by Fujitsu, and
reported to Business Service Management. I was not involved in the
management of these failures. Data centre component failures were as a
result of hardware failures such as failed discs, and did not result in
service failures due to the levels of resilience built into the service design.
The service was designed to have no single points of failure — as far as I
can recall the design was N+1 - “need plus one”. This meant that for every
component in the design, there was always a secondary component built
into the design. In my opinion the service was designed with adequate
levels of resilience to guard against system failures.
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Resolution of disputes
31.1 was not involved in or party to any disputes between the Post Office
and sub postmasters regarding any alleged shortfalls of money.
32. My role required me to have effective working relationships with business
continuity counterparts across third party supplier domains which included
Fujitsu. I was not aware of any contact or input from my Fujitsu business
continuity counterpart [Tony Wicks] in the resolution of any disputes in
connection with sub postmasters regarding any alleged shortfalls of money.
Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
Dated: 20/02/2023
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Index to First Witness Statement of TIMOTHY VAUSE
No. URN Document Description Control Number
41 POL00031810 Change Control Note 0965
2 FUJ00001981 Horizon Service Desk Business V8.0
Continuity Plan — contingency plan
3 POL00032019 I Operational focus — operational
publication for Post Office
branches
4 POL00006025 Counter News — operations
publication for post offices
5 NFSP00000386 I Post Office Limited Message
Broadcast Emergency Cascade.
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