Critics of the Ombudsman System: Understanding and Engaging Online Activists 7. (505)

To the Business Secretary:
For Clarity - Attempt 505.

505) Critics of the Ombudsman System: Understanding and Engaging Online Activists 7. Naomi Creutzfeldt and Chris Gill.

5. Ombudsman Schemes Are A Law Unto Themselves.

Dear Mr Clark,

We suggested to Naomi Creutzfeldt and Chris Gill that it might be a good idea if both sides met on the same day as there were several questions we wanted to ask Ombudsman Services:Property, but apparently this wasn't possible. There was to be no dialogue. It would seem that the ombudsman schemes were not prepared to countenance such a democratic exchange of viewpoints and information.

Even Yasser Arafat and Yitzak Rabin had managed to shake hands on that momentous day back in 1993 but a coming together of ombudsman watchers and ombudsman schemes was a step too far - for the ombudsman schemes

Point 7 of Naomi Creutzfeltd and Chris Gill's Executive Summary examines the willingness, or otherwise, of ombudsman schemes to take on board criticism and act upon it. They say,
"Some ombudsman schemes had been very proactive in terms of engagement. However, it is not clear, from the ombudsman scheme's perspective, engagement is likely to result in learning for service improvement. There was variation in the degree to which ombudsman schemes had found the critiques of ombudsman watchers constructive and useful and to what extent those critiques had informed service improvements and resulted in meaningful dialogue."
(www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxlaw/critics-of-the-ombudsman-system-understanding-and-engaging-online-citizen-activists)

We had no meaningful dialogue with the Ombudsman Services executives and they refused to accept our criticisms of their, "service."

When significant sums of money rest on an ombudsman's illogical decision, corruption is never far away.
However, the executives do appear to have read what we and others had said in criticism of their business practices because they:
- removed the company's highly revealing minutes from its website.
- replaced DJS Research with another organisation.
- significantly changed the reporting of OS:Property's performance in investigating consumers' complaints.
- and battened down the hatches and adopted a siege mentality.

Forget PPI. This is miss-selling, "civil justice" on an industrial scale.

The only dialogue Ombudsman Services:Property has had was with government over how best to implement the EU Directive on ADR and how to amend the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill.

The RICS even installed Mary Thorogood as its UK Parliamentary Affairs Manager. She talked of the,
"on-going political influencing and engagement work to achieve better regulation of letting agents," but the better regulation of surveyors had clearly slipped her mind.

We asked your department if the Ombudsmans61percent Campaign could have a Parliamentary Pass too so that we could also try our hand at political influencing and engagement work - lobbying - but we didn't receive a reply.

This scheme's approach to engagement with their countless victims (countless because the company no longer provide any statistics on complainant dissatisfaction) is best summed up in their sod-off letter in which they helpfully suggest that the complainant is perfectly free to take their complaint elsewhere and, "find a solution that suits them better." 

The only really meaningful dialogue - the one that's right on the money as it were - is the one between the RICS and its appointed hired hands at OS:Property. The RICS Memorandum of Understanding lays down the law;
"RICS and OS:Property will work together.....to meet the agreed aims of ensuring that:
- there is regular communication to foster the effective resolution of complaints by OS:P."

Nowhere do RICS the Regulator say what they actually mean by the term, "the effective resolution of complaints." 

It is key to the con.

Q. Mr Clark, when the RICS tells OS:Property what the effective resolution of a complaint is, how can the OS:Property ombudsman be in any meaningful way - independent?

Yours sincerely,
Steve Gilbert - The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign.