How to complain to an ombudsman Your rights

An ombudsman is an independent service that deals with complaints about an organisation if the organisation hasn't been able to deal with the complaint itself.

Ombudsmen schemes tend to cover a particular industry or sector, covering private companies and public (government) organisations. They are free for consumers to use, and are an alternative to going to court to sort out problems.

An ombudsman acts as independent 'referee' who looks at both sides of the argument, makes enquiries, asks questions and comes up with a remedy or solution that they believe is fair.

With some schemes, any organisation that works in that field is covered by the ombudsman scheme, but in others (such as estate agents), individual companies or traders must be members of the scheme for you to be able to use it.

The main types of ombudsman scheme

Main public or government ombudsman schemes

The Parliamentary Ombudsman - For complaints about government departments and public bodies such as the NHS in England

The Local Government Ombudsman - For complaints about local councils and some other local organisations

The European Ombudsman - For complaints about EU organisations

Main private ombudsman schemes

The Financial Ombudsman Service - For complaints about banks, investment companies, insurance companies and other financial services companies

The Legal Service Ombudsman - For complaints about lawyers in England and Wales

Office of the Telecommunications Ombudsman - For complaints about telephone, mobile and broadband companies

The Property Ombudsman (formerly known as the Ombudsman for Estate Agents)

The Housing Ombudsmen - For complaints about member landlords and agents

When to use an ombudsman

The ombudsman will look at a case only where an individual (or in some cases group of individuals) has suffered personal injustice, hardship or financial loss because of the action or lack of action of a particular organisation.

Private ombudsman may look at a wider range of cases, for example, not just whether a case was badly administered but also if a decision was fair or reasonable.

Check the conditions of the ombudsman scheme you want to use, including if there are:

• Time limits for making a complaint
• Limits on the amount of compensation that you can be awarded

If you find there are limits relating to your particular complaint, you may want to take your complaint to court instead.

Action that the ombudsman can take

Once the ombudsman has investigated your complaint he or she will recommend a remedy. This could be telling the company to do one or a combination of the following:

• explain why it treated you the way it did,
• apologise,
• change its practices or procedures to make sure what happened to you doesn’t happen to other people in future, or
• pay you a certain amount of compensation.

If an ombudsman receives lots of complaints about similar issues it can ask an organisation or government department to review or change the way that they work, which will improve things for many other people who have not yet approached the ombudsman.

In the public sector, organisations must co-operate with the ombudsman's investigations, but they can refuse to do what the ombudsman recommends.

In the private sector, companies tend to accept what the ombudsmen tells them to do – if they don’t it's likely that they would get thrown out of the scheme. However, the FOS is different; its powers are legally binding, so a court can force a company to do what the FOS tells it to.

If you disagree with an ombudsman’s decision

In the private sector, an ombudsman’s decision is final and you can’t appeal if you disagree with it. However, if you lose, and feel strongly that the ombudsman’s decision was unfair, you can take your case to court. The judge should look at your case independently of the ombudsman’s decision.

In the case of public-sector ombudsmen, you can challenge a decision only through ‘judicial review’, which is a serious and complicated process, and you would need expert legal help to do this.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Some ombudsmen schemes only cover particular areas of the UK. This is more likely to be true in the public sector. For example, if you have a complaint about NHS services there are separate ombudsman schemes for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Check which ombudsman covers your area before making a complaint.