11 February 2016

Bank of England: Complaints against the regulators

This Prudential Regulation Authority, Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority (‘the regulators’) consultation paper sets out changes to the Complaints Scheme to implement new legislative requirements.

Under new subsection 9A of section 87 of the 2012 Act, the Complaints Commissioner must now provide an annual report. New subsections 9A(a)-(c) require the Complaints Commissioner to prepare and publish the annual report and send a copy of the report to each regulator and the Treasury. If the report makes recommendations or criticisms about the regulators’ handling of complaints, each regulator must respond, publish the response and send a copy of its response to both the Complaints Commissioner and the Treasury. The Treasury must lay the annual report and any responses before Parliament.

New subsection 9B of section 87 of the 2012 Act provides express power for the Complaints Commissioner to determine the period to which each annual report must relate, and the contents of the annual report. In particular, under new subsection 9B the report must include:

• Information concerning any general trends emerging from the investigations undertaken by the Complaints Commissioner during the reporting period (new subsection 9B(a)).
• Any recommendations the Complaints Commissioner considers appropriate as to how the regulators should respond to such trends (new subsection 9B(b)).
• A review of the effectiveness during the reporting period of the regulators’ procedures for handling and resolving complaints investigated by the Complaints Commissioner (new subsection 9B(c)).
• An assessment of how accessible and fair those procedures were. This must include, where appropriate, an assessment of how the procedures affected different categories of complainant such as businesses and individuals (new subsection 9B(d)).
• Any recommendations about how those procedures could be improved (new subsection 9B(e)).

The Complaints Commissioner already publishes an annual report, the contents of which are set out in paragraph 7.16 of the Scheme and include:

• information concerning trends in complaints and on general lessons which the Complaints Commissioner considers the regulators should learn.
• information on the regulators’ activities during the last year including, for example, the approach they adopted to handling different types of complaint.

Section 87 of the 2012 Act sets out more detailed requirements regarding the production of the annual report and therefore it is necessary to amend the Scheme to reflect these.

The consultation closes on 9 March 2016.

Full news

Consultation paper

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