Ombudsman Services: Issue 1 - Asking Questions 3: Asking The Ombudsman To Send Our Complaint To The Board.

          Dear Reader,

        

    We sent the following email to the Leader of the House of Commons:

To the Leader of the House of Commons:

Ombudsman Services: Issue 1 - Asking Questions.

Attempt 3. Asking The Ombudsman To Send Our Complaint To The Board.

Dear Mrs Leadsom,

According to John Rawls, "A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable." (A Theory of Justice p.498)

This Government's approach to regulation and privatisation - far less of the former far more of the latter - has led to a mushrooming of self-regulating private ombudsmen schemes which have bought with them widespread consumer dissatisfaction - a staggering 80% + at Ommbudsman Services:Property according to MoneySavingExpert's Report - Sharper Teeth: The Consumer Need For Ombudsman Reform.

Q. Mrs Leadsom, Christopher Hamer the former TPO Ombudsman once asked, why it was that regulators didn't get it right in the first place. Mrs Leadsom why don't regulators like RICS get it right in the first place?

In this regulatory wasteland, businesses are left free to develop practices that do not work in their customers' interests. There is clearly a growing public sense of injustice. Our shared regulatory role (if it ever existed) has been steadily usurped by powerful vested interests. Ombudsmen are one such group. Their vested interest is in determining and administering private civil justice and maintaining a steady supply of cases. Cases that result in a 80%+ complainant dissatisfaction rate.

As a result of this unregulated market in private redress, John Rawls would say that society is becoming inherently unstable. 

Q. Mrs Leadsom, don't MoneySavingExpert's farcical ombudsmen have a vested interest in regulators not getting it right in the first place because if they did it would render them redundant?

John Rawls continues, "other things equal, the forces making for stability increase (up to a point) as time passes."

Time, is a huge contributory factor to injustice. Evidence degrades, gets misplaced, victims give up or die. For the victims left waiting in ever longer queues for their ever thinner slice of justice, time is most definitely not a healer.

One of the forces making for increasing societal instability is the refusal - or as the Property Ombudsman would say, failure - of those in positions of power and authority to simply answer our questions.

Q. Mrs Leadsom, why is this? And why has it reached such epidemic proportions in a supposedly democratic society?

It would seem that the coach who so expertly schooled the Prime Minister in question-avoiding techniques is the same one used so successfully by ombudsmen. The PM is rapidly reaching their level of proficiency.

Zoe Williams, in her excellent article, "With The NHS Reality Has Finally Caught Up With May" (Sunday 7th Jan 2018) wrote,

"Your answers become more and more inane." Answers such as, 'what I see when I look across the railways is people wanting to provide the best service' and, 'the environment is about a huge variety of things'

Zoe Williams asks, "What does any of this mean? Even you have no idea."

She cites 2016 research by Peter Bull, a psychologist at York University, who published analysis of political interviews. Interviews,

"In which Theresa May emerged as the Prime Minister least likely to give a plain and practical answer to a question. In two interviews he studied, she gave a direct response only 14% of the time. (the average for a politician was 46%)"

Her explanation of the Prime Minister's avoidance technique is clear, precise and illuminating and could equally be applied to certain Chief Ombudsmen and Lead Property Ombudsmen (and possibly ombudsmen in general. They would make a fascinating subject for a possible future Peter Bull research project). She says,

"Her particular formulation - to rephrase a specific question into a non-specific matter of bland principle, then agree with the platitude - appeared to work frustratingly well for a vexingly long time." 

It sums up the Chief Ombudsman and Lead Property Ombudsman's, ploy when "answering" our questions - which was, take the question, turn it around, give it a polish and send it back to you as an answer and then get indignant when you attempt to point out that their answer wasn't actually an answer after all. The Chief Ombudsman told us we were the ones who had misunderstood the Terms of Reference and not the Lead Ombudsman. He didn't explain what is was that we had misunderstood which in itself is yet another example of Peter Bull's 35 ways to avoid directly answering a question - turn it back on the questioner.

With answers like that democracy and justice are, according to John Rawls's formulation steadily becoming less and less stable.

Zoe Williams concludes her article with the warning that,

"A bad government blames its citizens, but citizens can blame back."

At Ombudsman Services a bad chairman blames his complainants. We hope more complainants - MoneySavingExperts 80%+ amongst others - start to blame back too.

From DJS Research's Customer Satisfaction Reports for Ombudsman Services it is clear that Laura Valentini, John Rawls and Zoe Williams's enlightened thinking has yet to reach the Property Ombudsman's office in Warrington.

DJS Research's second report in 2010 at 6.19 disclosed widespread complainant dissatisfaction.

"Dissatisfaction with the overall level of service is perhaps informed the great level of satisfaction with the perceived extent to which the Ombudsman attempted to resolve a complaint through mediation and negotiation."

This failure to mediate and negotiate does not appear to have alarmed the government monitors of this government approved scheme even though the company's Terms of Reference state quite clearly that the Ombudsman had been appointed to the post on the grounds of her mediating and negotiating skills.

Q. Mrs Leadsom, why didn't the government monitors of this scheme intervene to protect consumers from an Ombudsman who didn't successfully mediate and negotiate on their behalf?

We wrote to the Property Ombudsman saying that due to her failure (but not refusal) to answer our questions, we wished to take our complaint to the Council of Ombudsman Services:Property. This was because under, "Ombudsman" - Council 4. Disqualification: It states- (The Ombudsman)

b) does any act or finds himself/herself in any position, in the reasonable opinion of the Surveyors Ombudsman Service Member Board, the Surveyors Ombudsman Service or the Company (that brings it) into disrepute.

We asked the Lead Property Ombudsman:

Q. Does it not bring the Service into disrepute when you accept evidence gathered in this way? Surely the proper thing to do in this situation would have been to have written to The RICS Firm saying evidence gathered in this way was not acceptable?

Q. Why didn't this trigger a reappraisal of all of The RICS Firms so-called, "evidence?" Or does this Service set one standard of service for its Members and another for complainants?

We failed to get an answer.

4 (c) states,

"does any acts or finds himself/herself in any position which, in the reasonable opinion of the Surveyors Ombudsman Service (now rebranded as OS:Property)  Member Board conflicts or is likely to conflict with his/her position and/or the exercise of his/her powers and/or duties as Surveyor Ombudsman Service board member, or the effective operation of the Surveyors Ombudsman Service, the Ombudsman or these Terms of Reference."

We wrote,

"It is not that you have not answered some of the questions posed by a complainant. It is that you have not answered any of my questions or that some of the responses you have made have in themselves raised further questions."

We were informed that taking our complaint to the Member Board would not advance our case.

In this particular scheme the Board won't know if their Ombudsman is bringing it into disrepute because their Ombudsman won't tell them but we still don't understand why the Board should think an 80%+ complainant dissatisfaction rate is in anyway, satisfactory..

Trevor Buck, Richard Kirkham and Brian Thompson tell us,

"The ombudsman is an institution endowed with remarkable power that itself needs to be called to account. Not only can an ombudsman fail due to error or incompetency, but an ombudsman can fail through timidity."

(The Ombudsman Enterprise and Administrative Justice)

Q. Mrs Leadsom, who in government is calling this remarkably powerful institution - Ombudsman Services - to account? Certainly not the government monitors.

Q. Mrs Leadsom, when an ombudsman arrives at decisions in an illogical manner and fails to successfully mediate and negotiate on consumers' behalf, do you consider this to be a failure?

Q. Mrs Leadsom, if you do agree then is it a failure due to; error, incompetency or timidity or a combination of all three?

In a society regulated by a public sense of justice surely an Ombudsman's investigation of consumer's complaint should set the truth free, not imprison it. 

Yours sincerely,

Steve Gilbert - Workstock Number - 510458.

The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign is at: www.blogger.com and www.facebook.com Ombudsmans Sixtyone-percent.