The Post Office will decide before April whether to continue with internally built software to replace the controversial Horizon system, or buy an off-the-shelf platform, the company’s transformation boss said.

He added that a proposed four-year extension of the post office’s Horizon contract is currently awaiting approval by Fujitsu’s board, with an extension necessary “in any scenario”.

Speaking to Computer Weekly, Andy Nice, Chief Transformation Officer at the Post Office, agreed that the decisions cannot drag on.

Nice, who joined the Post Office in late August, and his team stopped work on the troubled New Branch IT (NBIT) project in early October, following approval from the company’s board and the Department for Business and Trade.

“We have been looking (in-house versus off-the-shelf) for about six weeks and we want to start the new fiscal year (April 2025) very clearly about the direction technology is going at the Post Office as a whole,” he says. “I would imagine there will be a decision before April – we are certainly pushing for that and I think the government expects that.”

He said the Post Office is now working with the government, which, he added, “has not always been the way and has not helped the Post Office as an organization.”

Another key decision that has come under scrutiny is the ongoing relationship with Fujitsu, the supplier that provides the software at the center of the Post Office scandal, which contractually expires in March.

Earlier this week, Fujitsu boss Paul Patterson revealed at a public investigative hearing into the Post Office Horizon scandal that the Post Office had asked for a four-year contract extension on the day he gave evidence.

Nice confirmed that this was the case. “We have been in discussions with Fujitsu for some time about the details of an expansion,” he told Computer Weekly. “In an NBIT world, or any other world for that matter, we won’t be ready to retire and distance ourselves from Fujitsu. That’s the reality of our situation, and Paul Patterson knows it – we all know it. An extension is needed in every scenario.

“The reason different time frames have been mentioned is because that conversation has been going around for the last six months, with different options requiring different extensions,” Nice added.

He said he believes the Post Office has reached an agreement on the appropriate time needed to implement its plans: “Right now we are in the nitty gritty of the details, and that is the four years that Paul Patterson cited in a public inquiry. . (That is) for anything Fujitsu comes in to transfer Horizon and all the services they currently provide, either for us to bring them in-house or for us to find another suitable partner to provide them. That has not been agreed (or approved) by the Fujitsu board, but that is the conversation we are in.”

Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered as a result of the Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history.see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles on the scandal since 2009).