The Office for Legal Complaints (OLC), which runs the Legal Ombudsman (LeO), has today published its Annual Report and Accounts 2017-18.

It has been a year of achievements and challenge. Successful implementation of the new cloudbased IT and telephony infrastructure, streamlined business processes and a flexible staffing model will now enable steady performance improvement in 2018-19.

 There were big challenges in the year. Alongside the delivery of the significant changes to the organisation, demand and case complexity increased with legal cases accepted of 7,527 against an expected 7,000. Staff turnover was high in a very competitive recruitment market and all of these issues impacted delivery in 2017-18.

 In the claims management company jurisdiction, we accepted 1,212 complaints for investigation. Most of these related to financial products and services, such as mis-sold payment protection insurance. LeO continues to work with stakeholders to ensure the successful transition of these complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

 LeO has a new Chief Executive, a new Chief Ombudsman and new board members in the latter part of the year. Building on the foundations laid in 2017-18, the OLC Board and LeO executive team will be driving improvements in performance throughout 2018-19.

Wanda Goldwag, Chair of the OLC Board said: “This has been an important year where we have laid the foundations for the future of the Legal Ombudsman. I look forward to working with the Legal Ombudsman team to use these changes to improve quality, delivery and performance”.

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Notes to Editors:

1. The Legal Ombudsman for England and Wales was set up by the Office for Legal Complaints under the Legal Services Act 2007. Independent and impartial, it investigates complaints and offers a free service to easily guide the public through the process of making complaints when they feel they have experienced poor service from regulated legal or claims management service providers. Its work goes above and beyond complaints by feeding back to service providers through courses, guidance documents, Periscope videos and conferences.

2. Residential conveyancing, family law, personal injury, wills and probate and litigation continue to be the most complained about areas of law in the legal jurisdiction.

3. The claims management jurisdiction is due to transfer to the Financial Ombudsman Service under the Financial Guidance and Claims Act 2018. This transfer is scheduled to take place no earlier than April 2019.

4. Rob Powell was appointed as Chief Executive in October 2017. He was previously the Director of Corporate Services. The new Chief Ombudsman Rebecca Marsh joined LeO in January 2018.