Tell us a little bit about your background before you came to the Legal Ombudsman.

I have spent the last 15 years of my working life focusing on ombudsmanry and complaints, most recently at Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman (PHSO) where I was Executive Director of Operations and Investigations, and before that at the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

I also have a background in regulation, having worked at the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Better Regulation Office in Birmingham.

What interested you in the position of Chief Ombudsman?

Like many ombudsmen, I am driven by a desire to make a difference in people’s lives. I felt that the challenges LeO faced gave me an opportunity to bring all my experience to benefit the organisation and our customers.

In your opinion what is the biggest difference between being an ombudsman for the parliamentary and health sector and an ombudsman for the legal sector?

Probably the commercial dimensions. The PHSO deal with public service organisations whereas the legal sector deal with commercial organisations, and so the drivers for service providers are very different. What is proportionate to one may not be to another. However, that doesn’t mean that people should expect a lesser standard of service.

What are the key priorities for the Legal Ombudsman at the moment?

Number one would be building trust and confidence in the Ombudsman and providing a level of service to both complainants and service providers that they deserve.

Both our recent annual report (2017-18) and business plan for this year (2018-19) highlighted the challenges we have faced to ensure our complaints are investigated in a reasonable period of time, and to meet the high standards of service we set for ourselves. Our modernisation programme is helping us to focus on developing areas such as our IT capacity and workplace flexibility to support the effective delivery of our work.

What are the areas that you personally will be focusing on?

Driving our performance, particularly ensuring the quality of our delivery, which includes a timely and proportionate service. Also drawing the learning out from our work to share with the wider sector. The role of an ombudsman scheme should not just be to resolve individual cases, but to take a wider look at the whole sector and drive standards in customer service.I also really enjoy casework and ensuring that we have a rigorous decision-making process that means we get to the right decision, first time.

What are you enjoying about the role?

This links back to what interested me in the first place. I really enjoy being able to bring my experience and actually share it and use it to develop the organisation and people within it.