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Witness Name: Leslie Henderson
Statement No: WITNO7750100
Dated: 17 March 2023
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF LESLIE HENDERSON
I, Leslie Henderson will say as follows:-
INTRODUCTION
1. I was a Post Office Ltd manager based in Leeds during the rollout of Horizon
and I was part of a small team responsible in the first instance for the installation
phase (hardware and software) during the rollout to branches in the North East
area. My line manager was also responsible for my counterpart who covered
the Scotland and Northern Ireland area. I had a single Postal Officer to support
me.
2. My initial job title was Network Support Manager (I don’t recall being called a
Horizon Field Support Manager but it was a better description of my role) and I
was tasked with keeping the installations on track and keeping failure to install
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below 2%. If the Fujitsu installation engineers experienced problems gaining
access to an office (Crown Office, Franchise Office or sub post office) or were
not being allowed to do the work Fujitsu would contact me and advise what
problems they were experiencing. My role was to contact the office directly and
discuss the problems and try to sort out some type of resolution to allow the
installation to complete. If I was at an impasse and unable to solve the problem,
I would speak to the Retail Network Manager for the office and ask them to get
involved and to liaise with the branch and to then to advise me of the outcome.
. Once installation was complete at a branch and software loaded the office was
able to go live. The staff at all offices had been on, I think, a two day course
prior to installation to learn how to use the system so the staff were already
trained up to use the system. I was given training on the system, but my role
and responsibilities did not include giving software or operational support on
the system itself. As branches went live, I also arranged/scheduled follow up
support where the Retail Network Managers would attend branch to help with
any operational/balancing issues using the system. This support was given as
a matter of course to all branches and additional support was available by
request. The feedback from the software training sessions suggested they
were happy with the training provided and post installation handholding by the
Retail Network Managers.
. At the end of the installation and go live phase the teams were wound down
and I was offered a role as a Service Review Analyst within the Service Review
Team at Dearne Valley. There were several Service Review Analysts in the
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team and each was responsible for specific partners and stakeholders. My
remit was to monitor the SLAs for Epay, Ingenico, Streamline Merchant
Services, First Rate (Bank of Ireland), and Fujitsu directly. I attended monthly
meetings to discuss performance against SLAs for 1°, 2"4, and 3" line support.
Monthly meetings with Fujitsu alternated between their offices in London and
Dearne Valley. I was the secretariat and responsible for creating the contractual
minutes. I attended the meetings with Fujitsu with my Line Manager, 2" Line
Manager, and also the Head of Service Review who led the monthly review.
Problem and Incident logs were a standard agenda item but I do not recall at
any time that there were any bugs in the system causing misbalancing. When
meeting minutes were completed they were checked by my Line and 2" Line
Manager before being sent to Fujitsu for their verification and when both parties
were happy with the content they were formally signed off.
. As part of my role, I also set up a branch visiting schedule to allow senior Fujitsu
managers to attend various offices escorted by their Post Office counterparts
to get first hand feedback from the end user in branches. Branches were
selected with the help of the Retail Network Managers.
. I left the business in 2006 and up to that point I was not aware of any
misbalancing issues, and I was still under the impression that the original
training and handholding sessions provided had been adequate.
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Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
Dated: 17 March 2023
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