Legal Ombudsman leaders insist they are making rapid progress despite falling some way short of targets for bringing down the backlog of outstanding cases.
The annual report for 2023/24 of the Office for Legal Complaints was published this week and revealed there were 3,376 cases still waiting in the pre-assessment pool.
That figure was a 21% reduction compared to a year before but still well short of the ombudsman’s own target to end the year with a backlog no bigger than around 2,600. The complaints handler has set itself the target of slashing the outstanding caseload to 1,000 by the end of 2025/26.
By the end of the year, 46% of all cases had been resolved within 90 days – an improvement on 2022/23’s 41% and a huge improvement on 2021/22, when 11% of cases were resolved within 90 days and over 80% took more than 180 days.
At its peak in 2022, customers could expect to wait 16 to 24 months before their complaint reached an investigator. At the end of 2023/24, the average waiting time was around seven months.
But the last year also saw a 16% drop in complaints resolved to 7,918, with a 24% fall in complaints resolved by early resolution. This was attributed to a particular drive in 2022/23 to slash the backlog through the new early resolution scheme.
The average complaints resolved per investigator each month has fallen from nine to 6.5, while the cost of each resolved case leapt from £1,618 to more than £2,100. The OLC had targeted a fall in case costs, although it maintains this is not necessarily an indicator of falling efficiency.
Chief ombudsman Paul McFadden said the failure to reduce the backlog and waiting times to the extent that was expected reflected the scale of the challenges faced.
He said: ‘While transitioning to our new scheme rules, we chose to use a significant amount of discretion in applying our new time limits. Although this was the right thing to do, it meant that we didn’t see the reduction in complaints we’d originally planned for.
‘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.’
He pointed out the second half of 2023/24 saw a marked improvement, with staff attrition at a quarter of the levels of the first six months and more cases resolved within 90 days.
Across all complaints that were investigated, the ombudsman found evidence of poor service in 69.4%, and of poor complaints handling in 46%. One-third of complaints related to residential conveyancing, with personal injury (14%) and wills and probate (13%) the next most likely to receive a complaint. A quarter of consumers complained about poor communication, with a similar proportion going to the ombudsman over perceived delays and failure to progress their case.
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