Post Office to decide on Horizon before April, Fujitsu board considers final contract extension

The Post Office will decide whether to continue with in-house built software to replace the controversial Horizon system, or buy an off-the shelf platform, before April, the company’s transformation boss has said.

He added that a proposed four-year extension to the Post Office’s Horizon contract is currently with the Fujitsu board awaiting approval, with an extension necessary “in any scenario”.

Speaking to Computer Weekly, Andy Nice, chief transformation officer at the Post Office, agreed that the decisions can’t “drag on”.

Nice, who joined the Post Office in late August, and his team paused work on the troubled New Branch IT (NBIT) project at the beginning of October after approval from the company’s board and the Department for Business and Trade.

“We have been looking at [in-house versus off-the-shelf] … for about six weeks, and we want to start the new financial year [April 2025] very clear on the direction of travel for technology at the Post Office as a whole,” he said. “I imagine there will be a decision before April – we are certainly pushing for that and I think government are expecting that.”

He said the Post Office is now working collaboratively with the government, which, he added, “hasn’t always been the way and hasn’t helped the Post Office as an organisation”.

Another major decision that has been examined closely is the ongoing relationship with Fujitsu, the supplier providing the software at the centre of the Post Office scandal, and which is contractually due to end in March.

Earlier this week, Fujitsu boss Paul Patterson revealed during a Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry hearing that the Post Office had requested a four-year extension to the contract on the day he gave evidence.

Nice confirmed this to be the case. “We have been in conversation with Fujitsu about the details of an extension for some time,” he told Computer Weekly. “In an NBIT world, or any other world, we are not going to be ready to retire and move away from Fujitsu just yet. That’s the reality of our situation, and Paul Patterson knows that – we all do. There needs to be an extension in any scenario.

“The reason different timeframes have been quoted is because that conversation has bounced around over the past six months, with different options requiring different extensions,” added Nice.

He said that he believes that the Post Office has an agreement and alignment on the appropriate time needed to deliver its plans: “At the moment, we are in the finer points of the detail, and that’s the four years Paul Patterson quoted in public inquiry. [That’s] for everything landing for Fujitsu to hand over Horizon and all the services they currently provide,  either for us to bring them in house or for us to find another suitable partner to deliver them. That has not been agreed [or] approved by Fujitsu’s board, but that is the conversation we are in.”

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).