Emma Simpson
Business correspondent
The Post Office has agreed to extend its contract to use the controversial Horizon IT system for another year, paying a further £41m to Fujitsu to keep the system running until March 2027.
Horizon was at the centre of a long-running scandal in which faulty software made it appear money was missing from branch accounts, leading to more than 900 sub-postmasters being wrongly prosecuted.
A Post Office spokesperson said the organisation was “committed to moving away from Fujitsu and off the Horizon system as soon as possible.” They added that a different supplier is being brought in to run Horizon while a new system is developed, and that they expect to award a contract for a new supplier to manage Horizon by July 2026 under current timelines.
Sources have told the BBC the Fujitsu contract could be extended until 2028 while the new supplier transitions to running Horizon, and the full replacement of Horizon remains some way off.
The Post Office had been developing an in-house replacement called NBIT, but concerns over rising costs and complexity led to that project being abandoned shortly after new Post Office chair Nigel Railton set out a turnaround plan in November 2024. Management has since shifted to procuring software from external suppliers, and a procurement process is under way.
A government spokesperson said work is progressing “as quickly as possible” to ensure the Post Office has the necessary technology, including replacing Horizon, as part of the wider transformation. They added that continued use of Horizon reflects past under-investment, which cannot be fixed overnight, and stressed the need to ensure postmasters have the tools to serve customers in the meantime.
Fujitsu executives have apologised for the company’s role in the scandal, acknowledging that Horizon contained bugs, errors and defects from the start. Paul Patterson, head of Fujitsu’s European arm, has said the company has a “moral obligation” to contribute financially, but no timetable or sum has yet been agreed.
