According to the Law Society of England and Wales, The Legal Ombudsman Service (LeO)must focus on addressing the backlog of cases and reducing average customer journey times going forward.
The Law Society in their response to the Office of Legal Complaints (OLC) 2024-2027 draft strategy and 2024-2025 business plan consultation for LeO, highlighted their continued concerns surrounding the Ombudsman not meeting performance targets.
The KPIs not yet met, included:
- The backlog of cases waiting for investigation
- Customer journey times
- Staff attrition rates
Nick Emmerson, President of the Law Society, said:
“Whilst we are pleased that LeO has made some recent inroads towards reducing the backlog of cases, not least because of the new early resolution process, the Ombudsman continues to struggle to deliver on its primary statutory function of providing a speedy complaints resolution scheme.
The customer journey time for resolving complaints currently is around seven to eight and a half months, which is too long. Shortening wait times will reduce the total customer journey time to between three and five months for investigations. This would be a significant step in providing a quick and informal ombudsman scheme for complaints resolution.
We believe that recruitment and retainment must focus on investigators and ensuring that their training equips them to provide a competent service where quality is assured and waiting times are substantially reduced.”
The OLC reported that in 2022-2023 the average productive of their investigators was 4.3 cases per month, which The Law Society, believe is “inexplicably low”.
Nick Emmerson, is aware that when it comes to staff productivity and attrition that the 6.9% increase to the OLC budget might look like a positive, and maybe it is, but the breakdown provides that is has split purposes. Increasing salaries (to help retention) but also to part fund a new team to continue to deliver on the OLC’s strategy for greater focus on learning and insight. The part funding on learning and insight to meet the OLC’s strategy, according to Nick Emmerson, “must not be at the expense of of delivering on its statutory function of administering a quick and informal complaints resolution scheme.”
Nick Emmerson, concluded:
“Despite the divergence in the views of the OLC and the Law Society on some aspects of the OLC strategy and business plans, we hope to continue to work collaboratively in the coming year.”
