Tougher role expected for Ombudsman, review warns

A strategic forward looking review of the Ombudsman Services Energy (OSE) has identified a much wider and potentially more difficult future role than the one it is currently fulfilling.

The Ofgem commissioned review said that it expects the ombudsman’s case mix to evolve over time from the current situation of a high volume of cases, to fewer harder to resolve cases.

This could have a significant impact on the OSE’s resource levels, skills and capabilities, the review said adding that it “was not clear that the OSE had considered this scenario in its future planning.”

It also said that there is “potentially much wider role for the OSE than the one it is currently focussed on” which would involve using complaint data to reduce the root causes of complaints.

Lucerna Partners, who performed the review, said: “While the OSE agrees it has a wider role in supporting and promoting best practice in complaint handling, and identifying and acting on wider systemic issues, it has not focussed on this, is unsure in the role, and has limited systems and processes to support it.

“OSE has intervened on some issues where it has identified patterns of behaviour that are of concern, but it has not done so systematically or always captured evidence of this or reported it to Ofgem.”

It said that the OSE data systems may not currently capture the data in a useful was to “identify wider systemic issues,” nor is it able to tracks trends across its historical data.

The review recommended clarification between Ofgem and the OSE on its future roles and the expectation of fulfilling these, improved data management by OSE to monitor its own performance and identify wider issues, and the recruitment of key policy and data analysis skills necessary for a wider future role.

Ombudsman Services said: “We have highly trained people who deal with cases on the telephone and investigators who collect evidence and provide a determination. They are not judges or qualified lawyers – they are experts who conduct investigations in an extremely orderly way. We will continue to run highly efficient dispute resolution services, offering justice outside of the courts. 

“We have made a number of recommendations within the energy sector and we will continue to call for change, which ultimately benefits consumers. For example in May we introduced new requirements that mean that failure to implement remedies in full within 28 days are met with tougher financial penalties.

“We have encouraged energy companies to improve their billing, and we have made detailed recommendations to the CMA’s investigation into the energy sector.”