Practice and Prospects of the Ombudsmen in the United Kingdom

In the last two decades, the Ombudsman concept has been adopted for many areas of administration in the United Kingdom. Among the distinguished contributors to this volume are Ombudsmen themselves (the Parliamentary Commissioner, William Reid; his local government equivalent, Dr. David Yardley; and the Insurance, Building Societies and Banking Ombudsmen); representatives of consumer groups (Lady Wilcox, Chairman of the National Consumer Council, and Jeremy Mitchell, Director of the International Consumer Policy Bureau); 'victims' (Sir Derek Andrews, then Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, and Roger Jefferies, Chief Executive of a London Borough); academic commentators (Professor Carol Harlow and Gavin Drewry); and Sir Anthony Durant, M.P. Together they debated how visible and accessible are the different Ombudsman systems to ordinary members of the public, whether they achieve the results which aggrieved citizens and consumers desire, and how they can be made more effective in the future.