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Witness Name: Neil Kevan Edwards
Statement No.: WITNO7400100
Dated: 4th February 2023
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST STATEMENT OF NEIL KEVAN EDWARDS
I, Neil Kevan Edwards, will say as follows...
INTRODUCTION
1. lama former employee of Post Office Limited (POL’) and held the position of
Tier 2 Service Support Advisor at Network Business Support Centre (‘NBSC’).
2. This witness statement is made to assist the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry (the
‘Inquiry’) with the matters set out in Rule 9 Request dated 3 January 2023 (the
‘Request’)
BACKGROUND
3. My professional background prior to joining POL was with the Cooperative
Bank from 20/10/1975 to 20/10/2000. I commenced my employment with POL
on 13th November 2000 before ceasing my time with POL on 1st June 2022
when I officially fully retired. My role during this time with POL was that of Tier
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2 Service Support Advisor to the Post Office Branch network - Network
Business Support Centre (NBSC).
. All calls made by Postmasters into the NBSC were initially taken and handled
by Tier 1 Advisors. If the Postmasters query, regardless of its nature, could not
be resolved by the Tier 1 Advisor taking the initial call, the query would then
be assigned to Tier 2 to progress to the point of resolution.
. Both Tier 1 and Tier 2 Advisors main source of reference in relation to any
query raised by any Postmaster, was to that of what is known and is still called
the ‘Knowledge Base’. This knowledge base information consists of current
information held on any Counter related product/ransaction, and the
procedures to follow for the handling Advisor.
. Such information is constantly updated as and when product content changes
together with any new processes that also require implementation/change.
Depending upon the subject of the Postmasters call, all advisors would link
into this main area of subject information at the first point of call, to ascertain
and formulate a response that fully satisfied the requirements of the calling
Postmaster .
The training I received as a Tier 2 Advisor within NBSC, related to gaining an
understanding of the numerous products carried out by POL over the Branch
counters via the Horizon system throughout the whole network, and also of the
linked financial elements of such transactions. Further to the aforementioned
transactional training, I along with other Tier 2 Advisors, received training
relating to the balancing of a Horizon Counter Stock Unit (Branch Counter
Clerks till) in order to gain an understanding of accounting and finalising the
balancing of a Branch Clerks Horizon Stock Unit. Also included with this
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training element of finalising a Stock Unit balance, was how to assist in
searching for any mis-balance / discrepancy the Branch may be looking for,
regardless of a gain or a loss they may have had at the time .
8. I did not have any involvement in any shape or form, with any testing /
implementation of the Horizon systemAT Project.
9. My experiences of working within NBSC consisted of a very professional
environment, and always a willingness to assist the Postmaster.
10. My responsihilities as a Tier 2 Advisor, was to assist the Postmaster with any
enquiry they had cause to raise that could not be resolved by the Tier 1
Advisor taking the initial call. Even if their query could not be instantly
fesolved, and further information would need to be obtained via other areas of
POL if need be, the Postmaster would then be called back with the resolution
to their queryfssue, and then only with the agreement of the Postmaster
confirming that his issue had been resolved to their satisfaction, would the
case be closed.
11. The NBSC was initially sited at Deame House in Bamsley, before the
operation was moved and re-sited to Chesterfield in June 2016 as the
Business Support Centre (BSC). This re-siting to Chesterfield unfortunately
resulted in redundancies of the more long standing and experienced Advisors,
who did not wish to travel daily to the site in Chesterfield . This therefore,
resulted in replacing very experienced Advisors with new inexperienced
Advisors who then had to go through the very involved training programme
and carried out by the in-house Training Manager. Again, all the new Advisors
would again be made familiar with the workings of the previously mentioned
Knowledge Base and its information/procedures held within .
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12.1 was one of the more experienced Advisors who chose to make the move to
Chesterfield, commuting daily by train. Once the new Advisors came out of
their initial in - house training, I along with a few other experienced members
of staff, was utilised as what was known as a’ floor walker‘. This was with a
view to assisting the new Advisors in an effort to aid their transition from the
training room and onto the floor when they started to take ‘live’ calls from
Postmasters, as their subject matter was numerous and varied .
13. Once the new Advisors became more familiar with the working practices of
BSC and all the subject matter/procedures that it involved, my ‘floor walking’
role ceased where I then became part of a small Team that answered Advisor
queries by telephone link rather than putting their hands up when they
required assistance, as was the case under the previous ‘floor walking’
arrangement .
14. In my experience, any Postmaster request for support in relation to Horizon ,
would only be progressed as a further training request on the Horizon system,
and would then be escalated to the relevant Area Manager to liaise with the
Branch Postmaster only. From this, it would be the responsibility of the
Postmaster to cascade the further Horizon training received to the remainder
of their Branch staff .
15. Outside of any request from Branches for training on the Horizon system, any
other queries/requests would be classed as ‘business as usual’ and would be
handled accordingly by any Advisor via the processes outlined and held
within the BSC Knowledge Base information, and a satisfactory resolution
sought.
16. To the best of my knowledge, I am not aware of any specific requests for
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support or events that ! consider to be important to the Inquiry's terms of
Teference .
17.The most common types of calls received that I recall, depended upon the day
of the week. The balancing week for Offices run from start of play on Thursday
moming until close of play the following Wednesday, at which point, Offices
prepare a balance of their Horizon Stock Units, so if any discrepancies arise at
this point, Offices will call asking for balancing assistance. Such calls were
known to carry over into Thursday and also Friday in the cases of Offices who
carry out National Lottery transactions. Aside of such balancing queries, all
other calls often related to queries at the Branch counter with a customer
transaction(s) where the Office were asking for assistance in how to process
via the Horizon system. The Office could also be asking for clarification or a
tuling on an aspect of a transaction, so the nature of their request/subject
matter could often vary.
18. The resources available were initially via the aforementioned Knowledge
Base, which was constantly updated as and when new
information/procedures warranted a change. Further to this, should this
information not resolve the Postmasters query satisfactorily, there was always
the option to escalate the query via email to the appropriate Departments
within POL Chesterfield, also including the relevant Product Managers located
in London.
19. Each individual Team within BSC was managed most efficiently by the
respective Team Leaders, the Team Leaders in tum came under the ultimate
control of the BSC Contact Centre Manager. I presume that this is still the case
since my Retirement of 1st June 2022 .
20.To the best of my knowledge, the attitude of members of the NBSC / BSC to
Subpostmasters, always put the Postmasters first in an effort to always resolve
any issue they had cause to raise, to their satisfaction.
21. In my view, I felt that the NBSC / BSC through whatever channels were
available to them, did provide adequate support to subpostmasters calling for
assistance.
22.During my time warking in NBSC / BSC up until the point of my Retirement
from POL on ist June 2022, I was not aware of any confirmed bugs, errors or
defects within the Horizon IT System. Even though rumours were circulating
as initiated by the Media that there could be Horizon accounting issues , such
claims were at the time , yet to be confirmed by both POL and Fujitsu . Such
statements as generated by the Media prompted Postmasters to call NBSC to
lay claim to any past discrepancies and stating that they felt that Horizon was
at fault and the route cause . Such calls made to NBSC by Postmasters were
logged accordingly and then assigned to the Outlet Fieid Support Team to
action and progress (as per the agreed process at the time and confirmed as
such under reference of POLO00029521 which shows details of a case I
touched back on 12/07/2012 where I carried out such an instruction .) Quite
what their processes involved , I do not know , other than to investigate the
discrepancy findings as reported by the Postmaster . I was not aware at the
time that any unconfirmed bugs supposedly lying within the Horizon system ,
could result in such high value discrepancies as were reported by the Media
Consequently , as far as I am aware , POL initiated the required investigations
from this point forward .
23.To the best of my knowledge, I am not aware of anything else that the Chair
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should be aware of relating to the IT Horizon Project.
Statement of Truth
(believe the content of this statement to be true. nn
Signed: I G RO
Dated : 4th February 2023