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Private and Confidential
Post Office Limited
Finsbury Dials
20 Finsbury Street Your ref:
London EC2Y 9AQ Our ref:
Via email only to Peters and Peters LLP 12/03/2021
Dear Sirs,
Re: Horizon cases —- CCRC review - POL compliance with statutory
notices
I write further to recent correspondence regarding the CCRC’s statutory notices
in Post Office cases, served in accordance with section 17 of the Criminal
Appeal Act 1995 ('s17 notices’).
Thank you for your letter, dated 26 February 2021, and also for Mr Read’s letter
to Karen Kneller, dated 1St March 2021. We are very grateful for the assurance
that Mr Read has provided and pleased to note POL’s commitment to ensuring
that s17 notices are complied with. Similarly, we are grateful for the commitment
which is expressed at paragraph 27 of your 26/02/2021 letter.
We have now been able to consider the contents of your 26/02/2021 letter in
detail and to discuss the issues at this end. Thank you for your patience while
we have gone through that process. In your letter you have provided a helpful
summary of the scale of the PCDE, and also referred the CCRC back to the
process described in the DMD and Addendum. No one could be in any doubt as
to the scale of the exercise which has been undertaken, and the very
substantial amount of work which has gone into the process. The CCRC also
acknowledges — as Ms Kneller did in her 23/02/2021 letter — that POL has
provided the CCRC with many thousands of documents, pursuant to our s17
notices.
Nevertheless, we are sure that you can understand why it remains a matter of
concern to us that so many case specific documents were not captured by
earlier searches which were undertaken as a result of our $17 notices. Our main
concern remains to ensure that such case specific material is captured by our
$17 notices from this point onwards.
Your letter of 26/02/2021 addresses the question of what the search parameters
or methodology ought to be in response to the CCRC’s s17 notices from this
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point onwards. At paragraph 26 of your letter, you suggest that the search
parameters may not need to extend beyond the searches already undertaken
for the PCDE. You seek the CCRC’s views on that point.
In reply, we would like to stress that POL and its agents are in a far better
position than the CCRC to know which search methodology is most likely to
produce case material which is captured by S17. The CCRC does not — and
should not — dictate to public bodies how they should go about locating material
in connection with S17 notices. If POL and its agents now take the view that all
case material which is subject to S17 will be captured by the search methods
which have been used in the process of the PCDE, then that would clearly be a
positive development.
However, I should make it clear that the CCRC will not wish to limit the scope of
the S17 requests in any way. The CCRC’s approach will remain as it has been
to date, that is, to require access to all of the case material for the individual
cases named in the S17 notices. That requirement is wide in scope and, as you
are aware, covers: “All documents and other materials, including material which
has been the subject of an application for public interest immunity, relating to
the conviction of x... including but not limited to audit files, investigation files,
prosecution files, internal reviews, and external reviews”. As you acknowledge
at paragraph 25 of your 26/02/2021 letter, the requirement extends beyond
material which is considered to be disclosable to the applicants in question.
I hope that this letter helps to clarify the CCRC’s position on this issue. Thank
you for the offer of a meeting to discuss further. Once you have had a chance to
consider this letter, please let us know if you still feel that a meeting would be
useful.
Yours sincerely,
Amanda Pearce
Interim Director of Casework Operations