Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry: update on the restorative justice programme
Published 19 March 2026
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The Department for Business and Trade’s (DBT) response to Volume 1 of the report of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry announced that with the Post Office and Fujitsu we had jointly embarked on a restorative justice project for postmasters, facilitated by the Restorative Justice Council (RJC). On 31 October 2025 the RJC published a report on the pilot phase of that programme, which set out what postmasters wanted from a restorative justice programme. They have continued to engage with postmasters in the intervening period.
The RJC is today publishing a second report which gives a further account of many postmasters’ terrible experiences of the impacts of this scandal, considers how a restorative justice programme can help and describes what will now be delivered. As was always our intention, the programme is very much postmaster-led.
The programme will include the opportunity for postmasters and their families, whether individually or in groups, to meet staff from Post Office, Fujitsu and DBT if they would find that helpful. Such meetings will be carefully facilitated by the RJC. They will allow postmasters and their families to receive personal, face-to-face apologies from the organisations concerned, to add to the public apologies which have already been given. They also allow postmasters to understand how the 3 organisations have changed, and what they are doing to ensure that nothing similar can ever happen again.
DBT, the Post Office and Fujitsu have agreed to support the programme both financially and practically for up to 5 years initially. Responsibility for funding will be shared between the 3 organisations. Fujitsu’s financing of the programme is separate from their contribution to compensation, which will be agreed once the Williams Inquiry has reported.
For over 2 decades, the Horizon scandal has done deep and long-lasting harm to many good people. This programme cannot reverse all of that harm – but experience of restorative justice suggests that it will help some people to find peace. It sits alongside the government’s commitment to do what it can to mitigate the scandal’s impacts through full, fair and prompt redress; transparency through the work of the Williams Inquiry; and justice through subsequent action against those responsible.