The unredacted Project Sparrow board minutes

Screenshot from the BBC article

On 26 Jan the BBC’s excellent economics correspondent Andy Verity published a story. Andy had eyes on two confidential Post Office documents which had previously only been published under FOI in heavily-redacted form.

They were Project Sparrow board sub-committee meeting minutes from 9 and 30 April 2014. Project Sparrow was the codename given by the Post Office to its interactions with the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, MPs and Second Sight (independent investigators) between 2013 and 2015.

During the 2018 group litigation Bates v Post Office at the High Court, the Post Office tried to claim the name “Project Sparrow” was legally privileged. True fact.

The heavily redacted versions of the two Project Sparrow meeting minutes were sent to me in 2021 after I made the request which led to their release. I published them. Shortly afterwards I received them in unredacted form. I failed to publish them. I am grateful to the BBC story (a well-deserved scoop) for prompting me to look through my own document archive. I am now pleased to be able to upload the unredacted minutes for your reading pleasure:

Unredacted Project Sparrow board meeting minutes 9 April 2014:

Unredacted Project Sparrow board meeting minutes 30 April 2014:

For more information on Project Sparrow, do read Andy’s report alongside my piece from 2021.


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4 responses to “The unredacted Project Sparrow board minutes”

  1. Interesting that “Project Sparrow” minutes disparaged Second Sight. I bet forensic accountant Ian Henderson will have something to say about that!

  2. PCOJ Investigator avatar
    PCOJ Investigator

    Excellent. I am still processing this.
    Mr Wallis, please be careful to archive everything that you encounter that’s potentially useful you, and not only on sites controlled by the Post Office and Fujitsu. This is because the (attempted) shredding is still in progress.
    I suggest you compare https://www.ukgi.org.uk/careercs/richard-callard-executive-director to https://web.archive.org/web/20220626175446/https://www.ukgi.org.uk/careercs/richard-callard-executive-director/
    These people are cunning. If they see that a page has already been archived somewhere they can’t get at, they don’t delete it. So we still have https://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/post-office/pressreleases/post-office-announces-independent-mediation-scheme-for-subpostmasters-1034948 without the need for https://archive.ph/zzvOm
    Until the tier 1 prosecutions commence, and a sufficient number of these crooks are carted off to prison for long sentences, and true panic sets in, these malpractices will continue.
    Their predeliction for using Whatsapp as their preferred means of communication is not without significance.
    Wombles. Wombles. Wombles.

  3. Bill and Catherine Guest avatar
    Bill and Catherine Guest

    Thanks Andy!

    We are very much looking forward to reading everything.

    Very well done!

  4. Please keep me updated, U am a subpostmistress who was robbed by the post office horizon system

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