Post Office gave out cash payments to Horizon users as early as 1998

POSTMASTERS who took part in an early trial of the Horizon software were given cash payments by the Post Office after participants experienced “numerous problems” with the system, The Telegraph can reveal. Robin Hammond, 84, was among a hundred other participants in a 1998 pilot of the system before a national roll-out of the software started in October of the following year.

Yet in a letter submitted to the public inquiry and seen by The Telegraph, Mr Hammond has described how postmasters in the South West pilot were experiencing issues from early on in the trial.

It comes ahead of a key week for the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, which will see campaigner Alan Bates and postmaster champion Lord Arbuthnot give evidence. Friday will then see Adam Crozier, the former Post Office chief executive, take the stand.

More than 900 were wrongfully prosecuted as a result of the bug-ridden system between 1999, when the system began to be rolled out, up until 2015.

However, Mr Hammond, who ran a branch in Peasedown St John, near Bath, says the Post Office paid out £250 to the sub-postmaster in the trial, in recognition of “all of the problems” they experienced with the system. His account is the latest to suggest Post Office bosses were aware of problems with the software.

A Post Office spokesman said: “The Horizon IT Inquiry is a statutory, judgeled inquiry set up to establish what happened and to question witnesses under oath. It’s for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions after consideration of all the evidence on the issues it is examining. It would be inappropriate to comment on related issues outside of the inquiry.”