Forging Civil Justice: Ombudsman Services - Now Too Big To Fail? (432)

To the Business Secretary:
For Clarity - Attempt 432.

432) Forging Civil Justice: Ombudsman Services - Now Too Big To Fail?

Dear Mr Javid,

Ombudsman Services with its close and continuing relationship with government , has grown at an alarming rate. They state;
"Over the past three years we have grown at pace. In the last year we have opened a new office, migrated the majority of our cases onto a new case management system, set up new schemes and added to the strength of the executive team."
(Forward from the Chair: Ombudsman Services Annual Report 2014-15)

But the Chairman made no mention of the maladministration of consumers' complaints by her Ombudsman and Investigating Officers as they migrated the majority of property cases to the waste paper bin.

She made no mention of her company's failure to heed DJS Research's disturbing revelation that the majority of complainants though the reports they received were completely against them or that the financial "awards" that some of them eventually received were derisory.

The Chairman also gave no explanation as to why DJS Research were replaced by another company who no longer ask complainants if they are satisfied with the, "fairness" and "reasonableness" of the outcome of their cases. And certainly not if they though they were arrived at in a logical manner or if they were satisfied with the financial "award."

In this rapidly changing consumer landscape she doesn't say why data on complainants' views on the processing of their cases was no longer being collated and published.

The Professor of Sociology didn't offer an explanation for the trend identified by DJS Research which stated that across all areas of complainants' satisfaction levels they had measured how they'd worsened year after year after year - from 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Nor did she offer an explanation for why this alarming trend is no longer documented or reported on by the new researchers. Or what they actually do research into is not made available for the public to scrutinise. Or why BMG Research lump: Energy, Communications and property all into one brief and largely congratulatory report.

What the consumer is told is that the new telephone surveys are an amazing improvement on what went before and that this;
"enabled more robust and detailed feedback, permitting a more finely grained analysis of our customers' views." 

A more finely grained analysis?

Why not judge the grain for yourselves and if you succeed in unearthing a grain of truth in anything they say please share it with us. It goes against the grain to say it but we believe that you'll find that a difficult thing to as there appears to be nothing there to actually analyse. With DJS Research you were actually able to see the questions they asked and what the responses from complainants to their customer journey - in the vast majority of cases they were highly critical.

Where are the questions BMG Research asked when telephoning customers? Surely there was a script? Where is the data? We couldn't find it perhaps you'll have  more luck. With DJS Research there was a well documented paper trail. With BMG Research's telephone chats there isn't. Which is probably the point of them. The finger prints are being wiped from the scene of the crime.

"Mrs C from Gravesend was  delighted when her roof fell off the day after she moved in and was moved to rears when awarded £100. She can't recommend Ombudsman Services:Property highly enough."

In their 2011-12 Ombudsman Services Annual report (p27) the executives state under: Customer Satisfaction Report that;
"The key characteristics of the customer satisfaction  reports are interviewing by telephone... while the service experience is fresh in customers' minds....Quarterly interviewing will allow trends to be identified throughout the year and will provide evidence of whether service improvements are being recognised by customers." 
The statement continues,
"And sampling to ensure that the views of different customer groups are captured, both in terms of sector (energy, communications, property) and service received."

It seems that there were 335 telephone interviews. We're then told that;
"The findings were split by sector. Both quantitative data and associated verbatim comments showed largely positive findings with strong levels of satisfaction with enquiry handling and high levels of advocacy of Ombudsman Services. Results were consistent by sector."

As there are three sectors - energy/communications/property - then you would expect there to be three consistent sets of statistics.

Only there aren't.

If you go to, "Positive findings with strong levels of satisfaction" you'll see under, "Early responses" - that there are statistics for communications: (76% and (85%) and energy: (74%) and (82%) respectively, but absolutely nothing for property. So you don't know if the results were consistent after all. Not an auspicious start for the new research company - or did they collect the data and it was too dreadful to publish?

They would appear to have lifted the grain.

The trend established by DJS Research - one of widespread customer dissatisfaction with the shambolic "investigation" of their complaints by an Ombudsman and Investigating Officers who struggled and failed to cope with the complexity of property disputes - has been successfully broken by the executives. The bad news would appear to be deliberately being removed from the record. This is what maladministrators do - they maladministrate. Otherwise it would have been different - like DJS Research with their thorough, professional and highly critical Customer Satisfaction Reports.

As Chairman and Professor of Sociology, Dame Janet Finch would surely have known this was going on. How does this new trend of vanishing data equate with her pledge that in providing  a first class service of dispute resolution she would be;
"accessible, honest, effective and efficient?"

The maladministration of consumers' complaints might be effective and efficient but in what way is it honest and how does it give property complainants access to the new, "civil justice" being doled out by this private redress company? It doesn't. And it seems that the executives are determined the knowledge that it doesn't from complainants.

The challenge of handling consumers' complaints about the property sector, "fairly" and "transparently" is clearly beyond them and this failure to deliver civil justice to those seeking it must surely now be the subject of a public inquiry.

Once again, this time in the 2011-12 Annual Report the ombudsman is forced to admit that;
"The complexity of property complaints has continued to be a challenge and something Ombudsman Services:Property has addressed by developing expertise across the business and introducing a new approach to reports. We have worked with the enquiry team to improve their knowledge so that they can understand the complexity of property complaints. The new style reports are successful because if companies or complainants challenge the report it is not necessarily because they can't or don't understand it."

This is a remarkable statement.

It isn't only the enquiry team who need to have their knowledge improved and this was pointed out for three consecutive years by DJS Research when they said that a majority of complainants were very dissatisfied with the, "fairness" and "reasonableness" of reports and that the conclusions contained within them have not been arrived at in a logical manner.
To claim that reports are now a success because complainants can actually read how illogical they are we think begins to show the extent of the problem consumers have with this company.

We ask you - would you fly in an airplane piloted by an individual whose only training was that they'd successfully assembled an Airfix kit of Fokker E11?

How many dissatisfied customers challenge the new style readable reports? We don't know because the company won't say.

The departure of DJS Research heralded a new era in the customer journey. First class carriages were replaced and customers shivered as they were cattle-trucked through the ever changing consumer landscape to their inevitable destination, a head on collision with the buffers that signalled their journey's end. But the trends that DJS had identified, continued. Most notably in the areas of the illogicality of the Ombudsman's decisions and what the company euphemistically describe as financial "awards."

The statistical evidence detailing this trend in the Ombudsman significantly lowering financial awards to complainants quickly disappeared after DJS Research were replaced by BMG Research.

See for yourselves.

If you go to page 59 of the Ombudsman Service 201-12 Annual Report you will see the very last financial breakdown of how the property Ombudsman distributed these so-called awards. By the way, they once told complainants that there was a £25K maximum pay-out. They don't anymore.

There were 525 complaints in 2011-12 which potentially could have meant the company's members having to foot a bill of £13.125.000. However, only 299 were deemed to have deserved a financial award lowering the maximum possible pay out to about £6.475.000. From the figures they provided and taking an average for each band we calculate that the company - on behalf of their fee-paying members - spent their money very wisely indeed. They handed out about £260.000. Over a decade that would equate to a bill of £131M being reduced to £2.6M.

Good for business. Bad for consumers.

The trend continued and by the following year there were 589 complaints handled by the team.  The new MAS system  (Mutually Agreed Settlements) was a total flop with only 6% of complainants agreeing at an early stage a settlement with the surveyor they were complaining about, leaving 94% to be determined by the members' Ombudsman. Yet although the overwhelming evidence was to the contrary the Ombudsman, as we saw above, maintained that this was a "success." 94% of complainants would disagree.

For the first time there was no breakdown of these financial "awards."

We tried to complain to Jonathan May, Executive Director of the OFT about this and received the following response;
Head of ERCC OFT our ref EPIC/ENQ/138617
Date 8th Feb 2013:
"You have queried OSP's (Ombudsman Services:Property's) decision to commission a new company to conduct future customer satisfaction surveys on its behalf. The fact that the surveys are being conducted by a different company would not necessarily be a matter of concern for the OFT, provided the data continues to be sourced independently and provide the information we require in order to monitor the effectiveness of the company. I have investigated this matter and understand OSP has confirmed that the new company will ask the same questions as those used on previous surveys, with the addition of some new questions about the OSP website. Should we have any concerns about the surveys conducted by the new company, we will raise these directly with OSP."

Q. Mr Javid, there are no surveys. If you go to: www.ombudsman-services.org and type/key, "BMG Research" into the box provided you will get one document - "12 May 2012" click on it and it takes you straight back to Ombudsman Services Annual Report. Why is there no survey?

Q. Mr Javid, there were no surveys for 2012/2013/2014 and 2015. Was this to hide the escalating trend of complainant dissatisfaction with the decisions reached in their cases and the ever decreasing financial "awards" that some of them received as a result of their problem?

Q. Mr Javid, the OFT clearly didn't have the information they required in order to monitor the effectiveness of the company. What - on behalf of the UK taxpayer - were they actually monitoring?

Q. Mr Javid, at the same time as the government was not monitoring the effectiveness of OSP (Ombudsman Services:Property) your department was working closely with Prof. Dame Janet Finch and her team on the EU Directive on ADR. Why were you working closely with a company that didn't have the information required by the OFT to monitor its effectiveness?

Q. Mr Javid, why was government allowing complainants - taxpayers - to take complex and costly property disputes to a company which was apparently the widespread complainant dissatisfaction with the way their complaints were being mishandled by an Ombudsman and Investigating officers who didn't have the necessary skills to handle complex property disputes?

Mr Javid, is this not criminal and corrupt?

It seems that once again that consumers are becoming victims to;
"A government hostage to the City of London, private property and public loss, fat cats and rogue traders, howls of outrage and demands for retribution and regulation combining mercantile, industrial and financial capitalism  a vast appetite for Empire ...the East India Company was far too big to be allowed to fail."

A read of the Ombudsman Services executives' various statements  over the years reveals that the maladministrators at the company developed an insatiable appetite for empire and monopoly, with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills working behind the scenes with them to facilitate it.

In the 2014 OS Annual Report under, "The Changing Consumer Landscape" Prof. Dame Janet Finch tells us,
"We have been cooperating with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) on the interpretation, development and implementation of the directive which must be transposed into law."

Q. Mr Javid, just how big a problem is maladministration at Ombudsman Services?

Q. Mr Javid, is the maladministration a recent development or has it been going on since the beginning?

Q. Mr Javid, where in the EU Directive does it say that the maladministration of consumers' complaints is lawful?

Q.Mr Javid, is maladministration of consumers' complaints Conservative Government policy and is to be transposed into the law and civil justice of the land?

What we are witnessing is the development of a monopoly in private "civil justice" at a time when regulators can't or won't regulate but who, with government approval, are left free to appoint company executives to determine what is and isn't "civil justice" and what is "proportionate" compensation. Executives who appear to regard 21st century of transparency and accountability as an avoidable option and who resort to the simple expedient of no longer collecting data on their performance in maladministering consumers' complaints.

Statistics can't lie when there aren't any.

The advocates and practitioners of the new "civil justice" seem well versed in the age old traditions their rights to what once was simply known as "justice."

John Premble writes,
"There was corporate laxity and iniquity."
Q. Mr Javid, what could be more lax or iniquitous than a company engaged in bogus private redress maladministering complaints and calling the process, "civil justice."

Ian Klaus' book describes a consumer landscape of;
"low, confidence tricksters, ever more ingenious  and plausible simulated trustworthiness."

Ombudsmen are fast becoming the snake-oil salesmen of early 21st century rigged market capitalism. They increasingly appear to play a vital role in helping inefficient and poorly regulated businesses pass on the cost that inefficiency to the consumer.

Ombudsmen, according to Prof. Dame Janet Finch, promote justice and along the way they decide without the need to debate the issues on the floor of the House of Commons, what price inadequately regulated businesses should pay consumers in, "redress." Justice has been sub-contracted out to private companies who because they are private have no legal requirement to comply with the Freedom of Information Act requests. The unit cost of redress for a member firm won't be very much. Why? Because ideologically Ombudsman Services believe its their economic function to,  "add real value to our members' business practices," and that won't be achieved  by awarding consumers "punitive" damages.

Parliament granted RICS its Royal Charter way back in 1881. In return it was expected to;
"Promote  the usefulness of the profession for the public advantage."
Instead, it has become what Ian Klaus would describe as a bogus institution packed with confidence tricksters ever more ingenuous and plausible who simulate trustworthiness with their claims to set a benchmark, worldwide, gold standard in regulation and regulatory compliance  and whose role is "to offer consumer protection" but who - when push comes to shove;
"cannot award compensation or force (our) members and Regulated Firms to do anything  - or refrain from doing anything - even if that means they are in breach of RICS Rules or Regulations."

With one hand they offer consumers protection and with the other they snatch it away.

Unable or unwilling to offer consumers protection themselves, The RICS, in turn have sub-contracted that responsibility out to their "appointed" company - Ombudsman Services:Property - whilst maintaining the fiction that their "appointed" company's Ombudsman is "entirely independent." The RICS members sitting on the Board, the Memorandum of Understanding that exists between the parent company and its offspring and the requirement of the Ombudsman liaise regularly with head office over the issue of the "effective resolution of complaints" suggests otherwise.

We thought we'd run this up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it:
The RICS have developed practices that do not work in the customer's interests and by inadequately regulating their members have created a revenue source from OS:P's effective resolution of the resulting complaints.  

It's an up-market version of the short-con pea under the shell routine, combined with some smoke and mirrors and a few well chosen words of magic and hey presto they've convinced you that civil justice is hiding under the new MAS, the new finely grained analysis or the new telephone interviews but no matter how hard you look you just aren't going to find it.

Why has RICS gone to all this trouble?

Perhaps Christopher Hamer has the answer when he asks the very simple question;
"Why not stop things going wrong in the first place?

Yours sincerely,
Steve Gilbert - The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign.