Sheffield sub-postmaster Nasar Raoof on working with Horizon until 2025 at least

The Star, Sheffield

Sheffield sub-postmaster Nasar Raoof on his concerns about working with the Horizon IT system until at least 2025 - as thousands in unexplained losses mount.

Transcript

00:00 My name is Nasser Rauf, I'm at Banner Cross Post Office in Sheffield S11 on

00:04 Ecclesall Road and I've been a postmaster here for three years now. We're still

00:08 working with a horizon system that is faulty, has been and still is, still has

00:15 many issues and problems. We're still having financial losses to this day

00:19 worth thousands of pounds, unexplainable and we never get an answer and

00:25 unfortunately we're in that position for some time now. In the last three years

00:30 while I've been postmaster here we've had losses of up to totaling £10,000

00:35 disappearing from the system, from investigations, the mental pressure, the

00:39 stress, the anxiety that comes with it, having to work with your staff, having to

00:44 go through the system, countless hours on the weekends and evenings at the

00:48 post office, the losses of total £10,000. Eventually after six months

00:53 worth of investigations they do get written off but now we still

00:58 find ourselves in this position to this day where I'm still owing the

01:02 post office £2,300 and I'm having to pay £50 every month, contribute

01:08 towards those losses which are totally unexplained for my end. So we've spent

01:12 over £2,500 worth on CCTV systems and screens and voice recording and

01:18 audio conversations and the reason for that is because of this constant trust

01:23 issue with the post office and postmasters and this is to give us

01:28 further assurances that we're doing the right thing and my staff continue to do

01:31 the right thing every day and it's a shame that we've got to pay ourselves

01:34 out of our own pocket, our own money from our children to be able to do this.

01:39 So there's so many issues here and trust and mental state of mind are the two

01:44 biggest ones. We just constantly trust deficit between us and the post office

01:50 head office and then us and between staff members and creates a bad feeling

01:56 and bad mental well-being for both my staff and myself. There's some nights

02:01 where you have sleepless nights not knowing how something has happened and

02:06 surely we can trust computers can't we? So the losses come at a time of financial

02:11 loss making by the post office element of the business. If it wasn't for the

02:16 retail stationery and cards that we sell we would be at loss. So we sell cards, we

02:24 sell stationery, we have a photo booth for passport photos, we sell helium

02:31 balloons and we sell our local Simpkin travel sweets as well alongside diaries

02:37 and calendars for 2024. So what we'd like to see is better share of the income to

02:44 make our business more successful. We'd like to see more support from the head

02:48 office and we'd like to see a better way of working the trust and the mental

02:52 sanity to continue as a postmaster in 2024.

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