Post Office report 'highlights issues of concern'

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.thisishampshire.net/news/gaz ... s/10534127._/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;?

A REPORT into a Post Office system, which has led to subpostmasters being accused of false accounting, highlights “some real issues of concern”, the MP for North East Hampshire has said.

James Arbuthnot MP has welcomed the findings of an interim report, commissioned by the Post Office, into its Horizon accounting system.

The MP asked for an external review after hearing cases where subpostmasters had been sacked, including Jo Hamilton, from South Warnborough.

Mrs Hamilton hit the headlines in 2008 when she admitted 14 counts of false accounting relating to the disappearance of £36,500 from South Warnborough’s sub post office.


Despite her guilty plea, the mother-of-two has insisted all along that she did not take the money, and that it was due to glitches with the Post Office’s computer accounting system.

Mr Arbuthnot said: “It does highlight some real issues of concern, some of which the Post Office has already addressed, some of which they are putting forward proposals today to address, and some which remain unresolved.”

Specialist firm Second Sight Support Services, which is carrying out the review, said it has not found evidence of systemic problems with Horizon.

But it said defects, on two occasions, led to 76 branches being affected by incorrect balances or transactions, and that the Post Office’s response to reported problems “appear to be unhelpful, unsympathetic or simply fail to solve the underlying problem”.

Paula Vennels, chief executive of the Post Office, said the company is determined to address the issues raised but said the review “underlines our cause for confidence in the overall system”.

[Larrydog]

My partner has been one of those subpostmasters that has been accused of theft. After a twenty month investigation by Post Office investigation department and having the charge before the court for over a year, Post Office Ltd offered no evidence at the Crown court. Evidence produced prior to trial shows how POL botched the 'audit' at the branch concerned, bungled the disciplinary and failed to investigate properly, the lead investigator admitting to being 'no expert' and entirely at ease ignoring inconvenient facts. Add to this breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence act, the Banking Code and the Data Protection Act on the part of POL we see that, far from conduction themselves with propriety as they constantly but unconvincingly claim, their actions run the risk of turning the brand toxic. Classic mismanagement bordering on commercial sabotage. I don't blame Paula Vennells for trying to put an upbeat spin on the 2nd Sight interim report but I don't think POL will be able to blag their way out of the current situation.