Ombudsman Services. Property - The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Between RICS and Ombudsman Services:Property. (651)

The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign For A Public Inquiry Into The RICS, Its, "Appointed" Company - Ombudsman Services:Property And The NHS' Livewell Southwest Ltd.

To the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary / Chair, Ombudsman Services.

For Clarity - Attempt 651.

651. Ombudsman Services. Property - The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Between RICS and Ombudsman Services:Property.

Dear Mr Clark and Lord Tim Clement Jones,

We read that,

"RICS and OS:P 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."

The RICS is an organisation that according to the OFT has permitted its members and (un)regulated firms to, "develop practices that do not work in the customer's interests" and yet here it is working together with its appointed redress scheme to, "foster the effective resolution of complaints."

Q. Lord Tim Clement Jones, isn't there a blatant conflict of interests here. How can a regulator who doesn't apparently regulate its members in the first place insist on working together with what is to all intents and purposes its ombudsman, to "foster the effective resolution of complaints?"

Q. Lord Tim Clement Jones, at a time when property prices have gone up year on year, your financial awards to property complainants have gone down year on year from £1.%11.75p in 2010 to 50 quid in 2016. Is this an effective resolution of a complaint? And if so, for whom?

Q. Lord Tim Clement Jones, TPOS manage somehow to award their property complainants £531. That's ten times more than OS:P can manage. Are TPOS ten times more effective at complaints resolution than OS:P?

What is, "effectiveness" and who determines it? Certainly not the consumer.

Even more concerning for the consumer is what is stated under,

"Provision of Information To RICS About Complaints."

Here we're told,

"OS:P will also provide RICS with management and performance data about the operation of OS:P as may reasonably be required."

DJS Research once provided an insight into the management of and performance in, resolving complex and costly property disputes at OS:P.

The conclusion they arrived at in what was to be their final Customer Satisfaction Report was that the consensus of opinion was that the Ombudsman was not an impartial arbitrator in disputes.

DJS Research exited. The Ombudsman remained. We believe consumers would have voted differently if given the choice.

Q. Lord Tim Clement Jones, does having an Ombudsman whose performance in handling complaints is not impartial, a reasonable requirement of RICS?

Q. Lord Tim Clement Jones, how does this meet the EU requirement for ADR schemes to both fair and independent?

In a healthy, modern and fully functioning democracy surely the above situation must call into question the whole legitimacy of Ombudsmen and their schemes.

In;

"The Ombudsman Research Project: Research papers in ombudsmen."  Stuart Hyson 2006. Canadian Political Science Association. (www.cpsa-acsp.ca) tells us that;

"the ombudsman has managed in its own functional way to emerge as a cornerstone of the modern administrative state ...not only in the form of the classical (all-purpose) ombudsman but also in a number of other, more specialised ombudsman offices. As a consequence of this oversight in the literature we know little about the ombudsman's actual performance; instead its merits have largely been assumed without systematic, comparative, and empirical based analysis."

They could be modern-day snake-oil salesmen for all we know.

Q. Mr Clark, if you compare and analyse the £531 financial awards of TPOS with the 50 quid handout from Ombudsman Services:Property shouldn't you be advising consumers to take their complaints to TPOS?

Q. Mr Clark, how did government monitors of this government approved scheme permit such a disparity in performance to arise?

Q Mr Clark, you once contributed to Direct Democracy a manifesto that advocated denationalising the NHS. Doesn't the growing evidence suggest that instead we should be re-nationalising the NHS whilst at the same time deprivatising Ombudsman Services:Property?

Stuart Hyson continues,

"...we are faced with a most fascinating research topic as to why such a firmly established institution should now be experiencing strains of legitimacy and/or searching to redefine its role within the democratic administrative state.

To answer this question, we need to move beyond normative, prescriptive and legalistic commentary that  usually dominates discourse on the office of the ombudsman in order to depict and access empirically this institution's actual performance."

Lord Tim Clement Jones, that was written 11 years ago. In the time that your predecessor, Professor Finch, was Chair of Ombudsman Services, empirical evidence of the Lead Property Ombudsman's performance in effectively resolving disputes all-but disappeared.

Professor Finch is a sociologist.

One might have reasonably expected her to have insisted that the new team of researchers tirelessly gathered data and analysed and interpreted it to ensure that consumers really were getting a fair and independent investigation of their complaint. Something she had promised. 

The opposite appears to have happened. The financial awards made to property consumers plummeted and at the same time the data supporting just how those decisions were arrived also shrank.

Q. Lord Tim Clement Jones, why are there no longer stand alone Annual Property Reports and why are they down from 8 pages to effectively just one?

Q. Lord Tim Clement Jones, why are consumers no longer asked about their, "customer journey?" Is it because many have been left abandoned in a siding somewhere just outside of Warrington?

The EU Directive on ADR expects schemes to deliver prompt and just redress.

Redress  that is also transparent and accountable.

The chaotic make it up as we go along withdrawal from Europe by this administration comes at a time when the consumer has no idea as to the effectiveness of private redress or the fairness of its so-called civil justice.

This is because those responsible for delivering it have made the choice of a) not to gather data on their own performance in any meaningful way and b) not to present it in any meaningful way.

Q. Mr Clark, if we can employ a Canadian to run The Bank of England shouldn't we be scouring the world for tough and talented Ombudsmen to run our ombudsman schemes? Individuals who will without fear or favour can be trusted to thoroughly investigate consumers' complaints?

Yours sincerely,

Steve Gilbert  - Workstock Number - 510458.

The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign is at: www.blogspot.com