McFadden: Year of transformation
The backlog of almost 3,400 cases waiting to be investigated at the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) “reflects the scale of the challenges” its faces, the chief ombudsman has said.
Paul McFadden highlighted the “significant amount of discretion” used by LeO in applying its new time limits, the increased number of complaints and the loss of skilled staff to explain why waiting times were not reduced “by the extent we expected”.
This time two years ago, Mr McFadden said LeO was on course to halve its backlog, which stood at over 5,800, in a year and reduce it to fewer than 1,000 cases accepted but not yet allocated to an investigator by March 2024.
The figure was revised upwards to fewer than 2,000 cases last summer, before being increased again to over 2,800 in October and again to 3,000 in January this year.
Writing in the annual report of LeO’s governing body, the Office for Legal Complaints, Mr McFadden said the year to 31 March 2024 was one of “transformation”, in which LeO made “a step change in what we delivered”.
Although 2023-24 was “far from straightforward”, LeO ended it “having resolved the number of complaints we’d aimed to – around 8,000 – and having made further significant progress in reducing the number of people waiting for an investigation, which fell by 21%”.
However, the fact that, despite the improvements, LeO did not reduce “our queue and waiting times to the extent we’d expected reflects the scale of the challenges we faced”.
Mr McFadden said that, while transitioning to its new rules in April 2023, LeO “chose to use a significant amount of discretion in applying our new time limits”.
The changes cut the time limit for complaining from six years to one, introduced a requirement to show “significant loss” and allowed LeO to dismiss complaints where there were no reasonable prospects of success.
In the early months of the new regime, LeO was investigating three quarters of out-of-time complaints. Mr McFadden said that, although this was “the right thing to do”, it meant LeO “didn’t see the reduction in complaints we’d originally planned for”.
He went on: “At the same time, underlying demand for our service tracked higher year-on-year.
“We also continued to feel the impact of external constraints on pay and benefits – losing a significant number of skilled people to similar schemes with the ability to offer substantially more.
“Taken together, these factors meant we didn’t make the headway we’d planned to in the first six months.”
Mr McFadden said that, in the second half of 2023-24, “the outlook shifted significantly”, with staff attrition only a quarter of the rate in the first six months.
Across all the complaints closed by LeO, 46% were resolved within 90 days, which he described as “the gold standard for alternative dispute resolution schemes”, compared to 41% in 2022-23 and 11% in 2021-22.
At the same time, the average total journey time for all cases rose by three weeks to 304 days.
The profile of cases in the backlog “changed significantly” in 2023-24, with the average wait for complaints to reach an investigator falling from 16-24 months at the height of the backlog in 2022 to seven months by the end of March 2024.
LeO is still missing its targets for how long complaints take by a long distance but it attributed this to working through the backlog.
During 2023-24, LeO received over 125,400 contacts, up from 111,600 the year before, which turned into 9,671 complaints accepted for investigation.
A third related to conveyancing, 14% personal injury and 13% wills and probate. Poor communication and delay/failure to progress were the main two causes of complaint.
It resolved 7,918 complaints, finding evidence of poor service in 69% of cases and of poor complaints handling in 46%.
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