Publish Workplace won’t compensate subpostmasters for IT outage
The Publish Workplace has mentioned it won’t pay subpostmasters compensation to cowl lack of enterprise and prices on account of a nationwide Horizon system outage final week.
On Thursday 17 July, an issue at a Fujitsu datacentre precipitated the controversial Horizon system, which is used to run Publish Workplace department companies, to be unavailable in additional than 11,000 branches for practically two hours.
Subpostmasters who had been unable to do enterprise demanded compensation from the Publish Workplace, however in a memo to its community, the Publish Workplace mentioned it might not pay them something.
“Some postmasters have requested about potential compensation to cowl any losses. Following an investigation into the impact this had on branches, we discovered the influence was restricted and, as such, we won’t be able to supply compensation,” mentioned the Publish Workplace.
In the course of the downtime, prospects left Publish Workplace branches with out making or finishing purchases, probably taking their enterprise elsewhere, whereas companion corporations similar to Amazon, DPD and Evri might have sought out different choices for deliveries. Subpostmasters additionally needed to pay workers who had been unable to work.
The Publish Workplace mentioned it recognized the trigger to be a “misconfigured command throughout a routine server restart process”.
It apologised and mentioned it has made “network-wide amendments to make sure that Operational Effectiveness Index scores should not adversely affected”, which incorporates overriding “any money declaration failures that day”.
The Publish Workplace mentioned it might “proceed to work with Fujitsu to make sure there are extra controls in place” to forestall the sort of incident taking place once more.
It refused to touch upon whether or not Fujitsu will face costs.
Second class service
Chatting with Pc Weekly final week, Richard Trinder, the subpostmaster of three branches in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and a member of the Voice of the Postmaster marketing campaign group, mentioned he misplaced lots of of kilos in wages in the course of the downtime.
He additionally mentioned enterprise is misplaced when companions and prospects go elsewhere. “For instance, in case you are providing Amazon supply assortment and you’re down, they may go elsewhere and may by no means come again.”
Subpostmasters haven’t any alternative apart from to make use of the Horizon system, which is provided by Fujitsu. Following the revelations of the Publish Workplace scandal, Fujitsu is dropping its contract from March subsequent yr, and the Horizon system can be changed, though it’ll stay in use for years to return supported by a distinct provider, which has but to be appointed.
Specialist investigation agency Kroll is at present reviewing the integrity of present Horizon system information and the processes used to establish discrepancies. The investigation adopted a report by the Publish Workplace scandal public inquiry, printed in September 2024, which raised issues in regards to the present model of the controversial system.
Pc Weekly requested the Publish Workplace whether or not Kroll would come with the newest incident as a part of its overview of the Horizon system, however had not obtained a response on the time of publishing.
The Publish Workplace scandal was first uncovered by Pc Weekly in 2009, revealing the tales of seven subpostmasters and the issues they suffered as a result of Horizon accounting software program, which led to essentially the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British historical past (see beneath timeline of Pc Weekly articles in regards to the scandal since 2009).
