The Criminal Cases Review Commission’s process for review of convictions relating to the Post Office and Horizon accounting system

The Library will produce a briefing or material for the debate and this page will be updated when it is made available.

The Post Office Horizon IT system issue has been a long, complicated and contested saga.

It started with a number of subpostmasters who experienced difficulties relating to the Post Office computer system (“Horizon”) which is used for transactions between Post Office Limited and its branch network. Subpostmasters claimed that there were problems with the IT system and related training and support.

These problems have been linked to prosecutions of subpostmasters by the Post Office and their convictions for offences such as theft and false accounting. 

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is reviewing a group of these cases.  The section of this paper gives further background to the case – the next section looks at the Criminal Cases Review Commission process in particular.