After senior managers previously flagged up the potential for automating the fixed payments offered to scandal victims, the public corporation has retained a tech supplier to help speed up admin

The Post Office has signed a deal worth almost half a million pounds to help automate processes supporting the payment of compensation to those affected by the Horizon scandal.

On 27 January, the government-owned public corporation and supplier Accenture entered into a contract lasting a little under six months. The deal relates to “Remediation Unit automation” and is valued at £484,050, according to a newly published commercial notice.

The document adds that the engagement will help the Post Office speed up the administration of compensation schemes for victims of the Horizon scandal. This will ultimately lead to money reaching claimants sooner, it is hoped.

The notice says that the agreement covers “development to automate the Remediation Unit processes in order to be able to process information quicker in order to pay compensation to eligible postmasters that apply via one of the schemes”.

Senior leaders have previously outlined the Post Office’s intention to introduce automation to the £75,000 fixed-payment settlement offered to victims applying to the Group Litigation Order programme.

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Appearing before parliament’s Business and Trade Select Committee in November, chair Nigel Railton told MPs that he understood that “the £75,000 fixed offer is relatively straightforward” and could be processed effectively by the Post Office itself – while more complicated applications that required assessment could be supported by parent agency the Department for Business and Trade.

“That is a process that I think we can automate… and make it very quick and simple,” he added. “It does not need a lot of judgment, because the rules are very clear. If we can do that and focus on those low-complexity, high-volume cases, we could clear quite a lot out from the Post Office and, given that DBT is the ultimate decision maker, it is better placed to deal with the complex issues.”

Later in the evidence session Railton said that “we are working out, from the Post Office perspective, how to automate the process”,

“The thinking on that is well progressed,” he said. “We are thinking about who we would use to help us to automate the whole process, end to end.”