Submit Workplace extends controversial Fujitsu contract in £41m deal

The Submit Workplace has awarded a further 12-month contract to Fujitsu to increase the bridge between the Japanese provider and a alternative taking up the controversial Horizon service.

The Submit Workplace doesn’t look forward to finding a provider to take over the working of Horizon earlier than July subsequent 12 months, which suggests its £40m December 2024 contract, which prolonged the settlement with Fujitsu till March 2026, is insufficient.

Fujitsu will probably be paid one other £41m to proceed to produce and assist the software program on the centre of the Submit Workplace scandal till not less than March 2027. However that won’t be the top of Horizon itself, which will probably be used till a alternative is developed by a yet-to-be contracted provider.

“Submit Workplace has agreed with Fujitsu a one-year bridging extension to the Horizon contract for the interval 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027,” mentioned a Submit Workplace spokesperson. “We’re dedicated to transferring away from Fujitsu and off the Horizon system as quickly as attainable. We’re bringing in a unique provider to take over Horizon whereas a brand new system is developed, and this course of is effectively underway.”

Makes an attempt to interchange the Horizon system have already seen a number of extensions and a significant in-house mission scrapped after a authorities report final 12 months discovered that budgets ballooned from £180m to £1.1bn.

A authorities contract tender revealed in Might supplied £323m to a “alternative providers supplier” to take over the prevailing Horizon providers. The second a part of the contract, value £169m, was for a business off-the shelf digital level of sale software program supplier to supply Horizon’s alternative.

The Submit Workplace requested a four-year extension of the Horizon contract in November 2024, because the IT provider’s European boss arrived to offer proof on the Submit Workplace scandal public inquiry. Paul Patterson, Fujitsu’s head of Europe, advised the general public inquiry that any Horizon contract extension have to be as quick as attainable and mentioned that he didn’t belief the Submit Workplace.

It was April 2021, following damning findings relating to Horizon within the Excessive Court docket, when the Submit Workplace introduced that it was getting ready for the top of the Horizon settlement with Fujitsu, including an additional 12 months to assist its transition to a brand new system. Then, in Might 2023, it set 2025 because the goal date for the completion of the mission. However in April 2024, Pc Weekly revealed {that a} additional extension of the Horizon contract was inevitable.

Throughout his look on the public inquiry, Fujitsu’s Patterson mentioned he had main issues concerning the continued use of the Horizon system, which has reached its “finish of life”, including that lengthy extensions won’t be attainable. He mentioned that some components of Horizon are so previous that Fujitsu doesn’t need to flip them off as it’s unsure what would occur if it did.

Horizon continues to produce erratic figures in department accounts, which the Submit Workplace can’t clarify, with tens of millions of kilos being written off. Based on a freedom of knowledge response to Pc Weekly from the Submit Workplace, previously two years, subpostmasters recognized greater than 16,000 discrepancies, together with each account shortfalls and surpluses.

The taxpayer-owned enterprise wrote off £11.6m in unidentified shortfalls, subsequently recorded on the Horizon system as a loss, in its most up-to-date monetary 12 months. Within the earlier 12 months, it wrote off £10.4m as losses for a similar motive.

There’s anger among the many public and politicians over the Submit Workplace and authorities’s reliance on Fujitsu for IT providers in mild of the suppliers function within the Submit Workplace scandal.

Peer James Arbuthnot just lately questioned the federal government’s reliance on Fujitsu: “Are we so depending on them? What does that say about our bargaining energy, or about our resilience?”

The Submit Workplace scandal was first uncovered by Pc Weekly in 2009, revealing the tales of seven subpostmasters and the issues they suffered as a consequence 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 concerning the scandal since 2009).

Learn extra: Fujitsu’s function within the Submit Workplace scandal: All the things it’s essential know and the whole lot it’s essential know concerning the Submit Workplace scandal.