Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024: Quashed convictions management information (3 October 2024)
Published 3 October 2024
Applies to England and Wales
© Crown copyright 2024
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/post-office-horizon-system-offences-act-2024-quashed-convictions-management-information/post-office-horizon-system-offences-act-2024-quashed-convictions-management-information-3-october-2024
This page contains information on the progress made by the Government in identifying convictions which were quashed by the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024 on 24 May 2024 and notifying relevant individuals of their quashed convictions.
The table below contains information on:
- The total number of assessments made by the casework team;
- The number of letters sent to individuals identified as having at least one conviction quashed by the Act; and
- The number of convictions identified as being quashed by the Act.
| September 2024 | Total to date (July* - September 2024) | |
|---|---|---|
| Total number of individuals assessed (1) | 194 | 459 |
| The number of letters sent to individuals identified as having at least one conviction quashed by the Act. (2) | 187 | 335 |
| The number of convictions identified as being quashed by the Act. (3) | 611 | 1030 |
*MoJ sent the first letters on 26 July 2024
(1) This number represents all individuals who may have in scope convictions that the casework team have assessed against the Act’s criteria. This includes individuals who we have identified as out of scope for a number of reasons – for example, because their convictions have already been quashed by the courts.
(2) Individuals identified as having at least one conviction quashed by the Act will be eligible for the Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme. If the individual is deceased their personal representative may be eligible to submit a claim.
(3) Individuals may have more than one conviction that falls within scope of the Act. The total number of convictions is therefore higher than the number of individuals who have been informed that they are in scope of the Act.
How do we identify individuals and their convictions?
The Act sets out five conditions which must be met for a conviction to have been quashed. These include the offence type, offence date, the relationship of the individual to the Post Office and whether Horizon was installed in the branch the individual was working in at the time.
At the time the Act was passing through Parliament, the previous government made references to a figure of c.900 individuals who may have been wrongly convicted of offences relating to the Horizon scandal and therefore be in scope of the legislation. This number was based on the total number of individual records shared with government by the Post Office and criminal justice partners where convictions were thought to be related to post office activity. However, these records included cases with convictions not within the scope of the Act and a number of records where relevant criminal convictions had already been overturned by the courts. These records also included convictions that were prosecuted in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Post Office convictions casework team are conducting complex checks to identify whether these individuals already identified to us have any convictions that are within scope of the Act. In order to limit the burden on individuals to provide information themselves to show that their convictions are in scope of the Act, we are checking multiple data sources to obtain information on which convictions meet the Act’s criteria. This includes records from the Police National Computer, Post Office Limited, His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Once the casework team have verified that each conviction meets the Act’s criteria, they will write to individuals to notify them of this. Due to inconsistencies discovered between the different data sources, the process of identifying quashed convictions is taking longer than initially expected. We aim to have written to the majority of affected individuals by early November 2024.
Individuals can also register on GOV.UK if they believe that they hold an eligible conviction or contact the casework team by email at: PostOfficeConvictions@justice.gov.uk. This information will be shared with the convictions casework team who will confirm whether the individual’s convictions are already being considered and, if they were not previously known to the team, will commence new checks.
Data on Horizon-related financial redress can be found on GOV.UK.
This page was last updated on 3 October 2024. We will update this page on a monthly basis.