The Office for Legal Complaints recently carried out a public consultation on changes to the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) scheme rules, case fees and publishing decisions. Barristers currently represent only 4% of the total of LeO complaint cases.
The Chair of the Bar Council’s regulation panel, Stephen Kenny KC, said: “The Office for Legal Complaints’ consultation proposals are too wide ranging, inadequately evidenced, will not necessarily achieve the desired outcomes and would be disproportionately punitive for service providers. What are needed are measures which are tightly focused on reducing the backlog of outstanding complaints. That is the most important issue. Many of the proposed changes, if implemented, will absorb LeO’s time and resources, and distract from addressing the backlog. That is why, in large measure, we disagree with what has been put forward thus far.”
Bar Council key concerns include:
- We do not support the introduction of a punitive fees structure that will change the current £400 flat fee to a potential £1,500 maximum fee
- Incentives for service providers to resolve a complaint at the earliest opportunity will not necessarily drive better complaints handling, and the changes proposed could mean that chambers will settle an unmerited complaint to avoid escalating costs
- In the case fee waiver test proposal, in the circumstances of a complaint having been dismissed, the service provider will only have the case fee waived where the LeO “is satisfied that the service provider took all reasonable steps to resolve the complaint at first tier” but there is no guidance on what “reasonable steps” would look like
- The proposed long stop date of 12 years for complaints should be reduced to 6 years. This would align with GDPR data retention considerations and Bar Mutual cover. Exceptional discretion to investigate older complaints should exist if the discovery of detriment occurs late and when the matter can still be fairly investigated
- The publication of full ombudsman decisions is likely to be a costly exercise with negligible benefit and will further distract from the focus on reducing the backlog