{"id":606174,"date":"2026-05-27T07:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/606174\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T07:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:16:10","slug":"inquiry-into-post-office-horizon-scandal-faces-five-year-delay-without-extra-funding-post-office-horizon-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/606174\/","title":{"rendered":"Inquiry into Post Office Horizon scandal faces five-year delay without extra funding | Post Office Horizon scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The police criminal inquiry into the Post Office<\/a> Horizon IT scandal faces a five-year delay unless it is handed millions in extra funding and nearly 100 more staff, according to the chief officer in charge.<\/p>\n

The Metropolitan police<\/a> commander Stephen Clayman said he needed to nearly double the number of investigators to 210 to meet a deadline of late next year or early 2028 for submitting files to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

The Home Office recently gave a special grant of \u00a32.8m to the investigation but Clayman said its projected budget was up to \u00a319.3m, leaving a \u00a316.5m shortfall.<\/p>\n

More than 900 post office operators were prosecuted by the Post Office<\/a> between 1999 and 2015 because of the faulty Horizon accounting software from the Japanese technology company Fujitsu that made it look as if they had committed fraud.<\/p>\n

The scandal has been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British history<\/a>, and was the subject of the acclaimed ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which aired in January 2024. Ministers introduced legislation later that year to exonerate people who had been wrongly prosecuted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The police investigation has previously been described as unprecedented in size and scale, and is the first to examine potential offences of perjury and perverting the course of justice by those who made key decisions on Post Office investigations.<\/p>\n

Police will await the full publication of the conclusions of Sir Wyn Williams\u2019s two-year public inquiry into the Post Office and the Horizon IT scandal before moving to charging.<\/p>\n

Part one of the inquiry\u2019s findings, which focused on the human impact<\/a> and on financial redress, was published last year. No date has yet been set for the release of the second part, which is expected to focus on the Horizon system\u2019s flaws, the culture within the Post Office and Fujitsu and how post office operators came to be wrongfully prosecuted.<\/p>\n

Met commander Stephen Clayman said his priority was to \u2018deliver justice\u2019 for victims and families. Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Clayman said the police investigation, codenamed Operation Olympos<\/a>, is \u201chugely complex\u201d and detectives already hold 8m documents. \u201cThis number is set to grow, with many of these documents needing to be forensically reviewed and considered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly by doing this can we piece together exactly what happened, establish who knew what and understand the role suspects may have played,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd as we have always said, the threshold to bring criminal charges is high, so we must be confident that the evidence we present to the Crown Prosecution Service has the best possible chance of meeting this bar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police have interviewed seven more suspects under caution this year, meaning 13 of 53 people under investigation have been questioned. Officers have submitted several files for \u201cearly investigative advice\u201d, meaning prosecutors are already helping to build cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, we cannot underestimate the task in hand,\u201d Clayman said. \u201cThrough the many conversations we\u2019ve had with sub-postmasters over the course of our investigation so far, we have been honest about these challenges and the scale of what lies ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis includes overcoming funding challenges at a time when police forces are already severely stretched. To meet our proposed timeline of submitting files for charging decisions in late 2027\/early 2028, we need to double the size of the investigation team from 111 to 210.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout this, we risk our timelines being pushed back by as much as five years, which we know is unacceptable for those who have already been living with this for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team of police officers and staff across the country was bolstered to more than 100 in 2024, up from 80 initially.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year ministers said family members of post office operators affected by the scandal will be allowed to claim compensation<\/a> under a new government scheme. Close relatives had previously not been eligible under the redress schemes being run by the Post Office and the government.<\/p>\n

Williamshad recommended that a scheme for family members be put in place when he published the first volume of his report.<\/p>\n

About 3,500 branch owner-operators were wrongly accused of fraud. Across all the redress schemes, more than 11,500 claimants have been paid back a total of \u00a31.48bn so far<\/a><\/p>\n

Clayman said the police criminal inquiry\u2019s priority was to \u201cdeliver justice\u201d for victims and families, and that he had met victims on Tuesday to give an update on the work. Part of that was to \u201cexplain some of the challenges we are facing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of these victims have been living with the impact of this for 24 years, some have already died and many more are reaching older age,\u201d Clayman said. \u201cPut simply, we do not have the luxury of time and must provide answers as soon as possible to those who so desperately deserve them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The police criminal inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal faces a five-year delay unless it is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-606174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}