Concerns deepen

This year, concerns have now been raised about the ECCO+ system and the government has said it would look into them, with a DBT spokesperson confirming: “We are looking into the ECCO+ system used in Post Office branches and its potential impact on subpostmasters and branch workers.”

Greenhow said the NFSP has so far received a “small amount” of anecdotal evidence about problems with the software from subpostmasters who acquired Crown branches from the Post Office and had used ECCO+ as a result. He said they have also received evidence from a corporate which ran what was known as a Company Franchise Post Office and used ECCO+ between 1993 to 1999.

But because the NFSP does not represent Crown branch staff, it is relying on people to come forward with information. “We are calling on employees to come forward if they were disciplined as a result of evidence from the system,” said Greenhow.

The length of time since ECCO+ was phased out, when the Horizon system came into use in 1999, means that finding users is difficult, particularly as many may not know that their problems could have been related to software. As with the Capture system, people who suffered because of its flaws might not even realise it – after all, it was ITV’s drama that connected the dots for many Capture users.

Steve Marston, a former subpostmaster who was prosecuted after unexplained losses appeared in his Lancashire branch while using Capture, currently has his conviction under review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

“Anybody who has the slightest doubt about a system provided by the Post Office should come forward,” he told Computer Weekly. “For 30 years, I blamed myself, and it turns out it was computer errors that cause unexplained losses I was punished for.”

Two former Post Office executives who worked closely with IT – Rupert Lloyd Thomas and Patrick Sedgwick – were instrumental in gathering information about the Capture system and helping investigators understand it. They are now turning their attentions to ECCO+.

“ECCO+ was chronically unreliable, it was a cheap and nasty system. I had a lot to do with work trying to get that system fixed,” said Lloyd Thomas, who worked at the Post Office for 27 years.

“There was a crisis with ECCO+ in 1996 and an investigation into it was commissioned,” he added. “It was carried out by the Post Office IT department and a report was produced. The gist of that report was that the system was defective.”

Greenhow said the NFSP has had correspondence from postmasters that took over Crown Offices and, as a result, ECCO+ was there. “They have confirmed that they experienced losses and had to pay that money back,” he said. 

Management said all data was stored on floppy disks, including stock and transaction information. Each stock unit had a separate disk with staff assigned their own logins and, at the end of each day, all data from the disks was copied onto a master storage unit, which was used as a backup.

The former manager of the Company Franchise Post Office told the NFSP: “The biggest issue [with ECCO+] was the corruption of disks resulting in loss of data, and then having to rely on the backup which inevitably had missing information between corruption and back up retrieval.

“From memory, there were losses. These were the early days, so lack of experience and knowledge was clearly visible. Mis-keys and incorrect amounts paid out were identified, but the integrity of ECCO+ was never questioned as there was a head office backup in place. Blind leading the blind.”

Gaps to fill

But there are significant gaps in the evidence so far as the bulk of users – Crown Branch employees between 1992 and 1999 – are not part of the NFSP. These workers could have lost their jobs or faced other disciplinary action as a result of unexplained losses potentially caused by ECCO+ errors.

“What we don’t have is the evidence from Crown Office employees because that information is not in our remit,” said Greenhow.

Beyond disciplinary action, there are potentially users of ECCO+ that were prosecuted based on unexplained losses. There were 340 private prosecutions by the Post Office in the 1992-1999 period, but it is not yet known if any were based on ECCO+ data.

“We know that between 1992 and 1999, the Post Office carried about 340 prosecutions. What we don’t know is who was prosecuted, why they were prosecuted and what was the impact,” said Greenhow.

“We’ve asked the government, along with the Ministry of Justice, to identify and breakdown whether these prosecutions were for Capture or ECCO+ or something else. Nor do we know whether they are employees, assistants or postmasters, but I have asked this question of the minister.”

Anyone who believes they might have been affected by ECCO+ errors should email the NFSP and Howe & Co solicitors at [email protected].

Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal 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).