Emma Simpson
Business correspondent
The Post Office will pay Fujitsu a further £41m to keep its Horizon IT system running until March 2027 after agreeing a one-year extension to the supplier contract.
Horizon was central to a major scandal in which software faults made it appear that money was missing from branch accounts, resulting in more than 900 sub-postmasters being wrongly prosecuted.
A Post Office spokesperson said the organisation remains “committed to moving away from Fujitsu and off the Horizon system as soon as possible.” They added a different supplier will be brought in to operate Horizon while a new replacement system is developed, and the body currently expects to award that contract by July 2026 under present timelines.
Sources have told the BBC the Fujitsu arrangement could be prolonged into 2028 to allow a new supplier to take over during a transition, and that a full replacement of Horizon is still some way off.
The Post Office had been building an internal replacement called NBIT, but work on the project was abandoned after concerns about rising costs and technical complexity following the turnaround plan set out by chair Nigel Railton in November 2024. Management has shifted to procuring software from external vendors and a procurement process is now under way.
A government spokesperson said efforts are proceeding “as quickly as possible” to provide the Post Office with necessary technology as part of a broader transformation, and noted that continued use of Horizon reflects past under-investment that cannot be resolved immediately. They stressed the need to ensure postmasters have reliable tools to serve customers in the meantime.
Fujitsu executives have apologised for the company’s role in the scandal, acknowledging Horizon contained bugs and defects from the start. Paul Patterson, head of Fujitsu’s European arm, has said the firm has a “moral obligation” to provide financial redress, though no timetable or sum has been agreed.
