Post Office: still-troubled horizons

A letter box outside a Post Office branch in Bourton-on-the-Water — CEO Nick Read has resigned ahead of his appearance before the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal

(Image credit: Matt Cardy / Getty Images)

Post Office executives "will be on tenterhooks" as the long-running public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal reopened this week, said Mark Sweney in The Observer. Following an already devastating "litany" of cover-ups and management screw-ups, the last phase of the probe, chaired by High Court judge Sir Wyn Williams, "will hear whether lessons have been learnt" by examining the Post Office's "current state and culture".

Embattled CEO Nick Read, who replaced Paula Vennells in 2019 before becoming "embroiled in a reputational crisis of his own", has resigned ahead of his appearance. Read had "temporarily stepped back" over the summer so he could, he said, give the inquiry his "entire attention". In March, he was "exonerated" after a separate investigation into bullying.

The airing of two anonymous surveys of Post Office operators won't make life any more comfortable for bosses. Complaints about the Horizon IT system – whose faults prompted "one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history" – still feature prominently, said Michael Race on BBC News. Some 92% of sub-postmasters surveyed reported issues with the Fujitsu-developed system, which was described as "flawed" and still dogged by "unexplained discrepancies".

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As the loss-making Post Office tries to draw a line under the crisis, much depends on chair Nigel Railton, parachuted in from National Lottery operator Camelot – apparently "against the advice of his wife", said John Gapper in the FT. Railton "somehow has to convince the Treasury that it will not be throwing good money after bad by handing out yet more investment capital". The PO has to become a decent business – whether it remains in state hands, or becomes "a mutual owned by postmasters" as some suggest. "It is too embedded in British society to fail."