Post Office branches still hit by major shortfalls on Horizon accounts, new figures reveal
Almost 3,000 Post Office branches recorded at least one shortfall on their Horizon accounts over the course of a week, recent figures reveal.
Recent data obtained by The Telegraph show the difference between cash totals and Horizon figures are surpassing £1 million in branches across the country on some days.
The figures emerged through the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act just weeks before the next phase of a public inquiry into the Horizon scandal, in which hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted for shortfalls produced by faulty software between 1999 and 2015.
A Post Office spokesman said that multiple factors – other than Horizon errors – could cause shortfalls to be recorded.
The Post Office still uses Horizon accounting software in its branches, following a High Court ruling in 2019 that the updated system was “robust”.
Data obtained through FoI analysing shortfalls and surpluses over a week in January this year, found 2,812 individual branches recorded shortfalls on one day of the week – recording a £1,090,728 difference between cash in hand and the Horizon calculations in total.
Across the week, 640 branches a day on average reported shortfalls – recording a difference of just under £318,000 per day in total.
Branches also report surpluses
Overall, the total reported shortfall during the week of Jan 8 to Jan 14 amounted to £2,224,968.
Jan 14, a Sunday, saw the smallest number of branches recording shortfalls in the week – with 35 branches recording differences amounting to £42,441 in total.
Alongside the shortfalls, the FoI request also revealed that branches recorded £3,498,659 in surplus across the week – with a daily average of 691 branches recording more money than expected.
A Post Office spokesperson told The Telegraph that it was “not uncommon for any retail franchise business to have their franchisees submit positive or negative accounts at the end of each day or month and is “irrespective of what Point of Sale (POS) device is used by different retailers”.
It is understood cash may not balance if incorrect change is given to customers or if cash is not counted correctly when it is moved from the main safe to the till.
Yet the figures also revealed that the Post Office’s business support centre receives hundreds of calls a day from postmasters with queries about operating their Horizon counters.
Wednesday Jan 10 saw the highest number of calls – with 1,093 enquiries made in total.
It is understood this high number of calls is because Wednesday is the most popular day for doing a full counter cash declaration.
The Telegraph recently revealed that hundreds of sub-postmasters have now installed CCTV in their branches out of fear of being blamed for shortfalls.
Richard Trinder, who runs a branch in Sheffield, spent £2,500 two years ago on security cameras, allowing him to monitor his counter.
The 63-year-old, who runs the 900-strong campaign group Voice of The Postmaster, told The Telegraph: “These figures agree with what we hear from our members on a regular basis.
“Whether these shortages and gains are human error or down to glitches, bugs and errors I have no idea, but I think that every office should have access to a subsidised CCTV system that could help to prevent these shortfalls and aid both postmasters and Post Office in identifying how these issues occur.
“We at Voice of the Postmaster would be happy to work with Post Office on anything to improve the accuracy of the system.”
’We are helping postmasters’
The current version of Horizon in branches was introduced in 2017 and the Post Office has intended to replace the Fujitsu software with a cloud-based system for a number of years.
A Post Office spokesperson said: “At Post Office, we have implemented a number of measures since the GLO judgement in 2019 to ensure the support we provide postmasters who may have a discrepancy – whether that’s a surplus or a deficit - is much improved and involves working in partnership with them to understand how a discrepancy has occurred.”
He added: “We have 11,500 branches across the country staffed by 50,000 people day in day out.
“To have calls in the high hundreds on a daily basis is nothing unusual and we have made a number of operational changes in recent years to ensure if a colleague is not available to immediately answer a call from a postmaster or their staff, that the call wait time is kept to a minimum.”
A Fujitsu spokesperson declined to comment specifically on the data, but said it regarded the Post Office Horizon scandal “with the utmost seriousness and offers its deepest apologies to the sub-postmasters and their families”.
