Communication Workers Union warns subpostmasters of flaw in Post Office Horizon accounting system

Post Office department recognises duplication problem

Following a post on a web forum, another postmaster recognised the problem as something she had experienced in the past, and the financial department of the Post Office in Chesterfield was contacted on her advice.

According to the postmasters' branch of the CWU, the financial department recognised the issue and told the postmaster they would need to send a positive monetary change to the Horizon branch accounts to negate the non-existent loss that had been created by the duplication.

The alleged fault, if proved, would question the Post Office’s continued claims that there are no systemic faults in Horizon.

The Post Office denies system-wide problems with Horizon and stressed that no technical fault has been found to have been responsible for a postmaster being “wrongly held responsible for a loss”.

“[We have] robust back-office reconciliation processes to identify and address account balancing issues when they arise,” said the Post Office.

“The Post Office provides extensive support, including visits to branches, if postmasters need support about branch accounting or other aspects of running their branch, and we encourage them to contact us if they have any concerns,” it added.

“It remains the case that more than three years of investigations have not identified any transaction caused by a technical fault in Horizon which resulted in a postmaster wrongly being held responsible for a loss.”

Mark Baker, secretary of the CWU postmasters branch, said: “If we get complaints we have people with the skills to investigate the Horizon system on behalf of subpostmasters. In the process of doing this recently, we believe we have found another systemic flaw.”

Horizon 'systemically flawed' says Second Sight's independent report

The CWU claims this is one example of a glitch that could happen anywhere across the network, and is not restricted to one type of transaction or branch.

While the Post Office has said that occasional problems occur, it stresses there are no systemic glitches.

There have however been claims of alleged problems in the past by experts, but the Post Office has always denied they represent evidence of systemic flaws.

The results of an independent investigation, commissioned by the Post Office and carried out by forensic investigation company Second Sight, were published in April 2015. The report said there can be systemic problems for users: “As we have previously stated, when looking at the totality of the Horizon experience we remain concerned that, in some circumstances, Horizon can be systemically flawed from a user’s perspective and Post Office has not necessarily provided an appropriate level of support.”

When Computer Weekly put the claims to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) at the time of the report, the BIS press office said: “Systemic flaws would refer to errors or faults in the Horizon system capable of causing the accounting discrepancies that have been alleged.

"Rather, the sentence summarises the conclusions Second Sight reached, based on their findings having looked at not only the Horizon system but other directly and indirectly associated elements, such as training and support processes, and individual subpostmasters’ circumstances.”

Campaigners want an independent inquiry. “The only way we will get to the bottom of it is to have a truly independent inquiry, which Post Office is not involved in,” said one.

The Criminal Courts Review Commission (CCRC) is currently reviewing subpostmasters' claims of wrongful prosecution.

The CCRC has set up a team to focus on the cases including subpostmasters that received suspended or non-custodial sentences, including community service, but others that received custodial sentences for between six and 18 months.