Post Office will not compensate subpostmasters for IT outage
Anthony Brown – stock.adobe.com
Subpostmasters were unable to trade for nearly two hours last week when a problem at a Fujitsu datacentre put the Horizon system offline, but they will receive no payment for lost business
The Post Office has said it will not pay subpostmasters compensation to cover loss of business and costs as a result of a nationwide Horizon system outage last week.
On Thursday 17 July, a problem at a Fujitsu datacentre caused the controversial Horizon system, which is used to run Post Office branch businesses, to be unavailable in more than 11,000 branches for nearly two hours.
Subpostmasters who were unable to do business demanded compensation from the Post Office, but in a memo to its network, the Post Office said it would not pay them anything.
“Some postmasters have asked about potential compensation to cover any losses. Following an investigation into the effect this had on branches, we found the impact was limited and, as such, we will not be able to provide compensation,” said the Post Office.
During the downtime, customers left Post Office branches without making or completing purchases, potentially taking their business elsewhere, while partner firms such as Amazon, DPD and Evri may have sought out other options for deliveries. Subpostmasters also had to pay staff who were unable to work.
The Post Office said it identified the cause to be a “misconfigured command during a routine server restart procedure”.
It apologised and said it has made “network-wide amendments to ensure that Operational Effectiveness Index scores are not adversely affected”, which includes overriding “any cash declaration failures that day”.
The Post Office said it would “continue to work with Fujitsu to ensure there are additional controls in place” to prevent this type of incident happening again.
It refused to comment on whether Fujitsu will face charges.
Second class service
Speaking to Computer Weekly last week, Richard Trinder, the subpostmaster of three branches in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and a member of the Voice of the Postmaster campaign group, said he lost hundreds of pounds in wages during the downtime.
He also said business is lost when partners and customers go elsewhere. “For example, if you are offering Amazon delivery collection and you are down, they will go elsewhere and might never come back.”
Subpostmasters have no choice other than to use the Horizon system, which is supplied by Fujitsu. Following the revelations of the Post Office scandal, Fujitsu is losing its contract from March next year, and the Horizon system will be replaced, although it will remain in use for years to come supported by a different supplier, which has yet to be appointed.
Specialist investigation firm Kroll is currently reviewing the integrity of current Horizon system data and the processes used to identify discrepancies. The investigation followed a report by the Post Office scandal public inquiry, published in September 2024, which raised concerns about the current version of the controversial system.
Computer Weekly asked the Post Office whether Kroll would include the latest incident as part of its review of the Horizon system, but had not received a response at the time of publishing.
The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).
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