Professor Naomi Creutzfeldt’s first-of-its-kind research on European ombudsmen has influenced significant policy change and helped to give consumers a voice.
Ombudsman systems play a central role in resolving disputes outside the courts. Yet despite their importance, little was known of how users felt about these systems or their procedural fairness.
Professor Naomi Creutzfeldt has helped to correct this lack of knowledge with the first ever research on the topic. Her 2018 book, Ombudsmen and ADR: A Comparative Study of Informal Justice in Europe, evaluates over 3,000 consumer feedback responses from 14 British, German and French ombudsman schemes.
Drawing on this research, Creutzfeldt has helped to enhance the quality of practice across the Ombudsman Association, the Local Government Ombudsman, and The Ombudsman Services in the UK. In Germany, Creutzfeldt’s input has driven policy change, including the creation of a new universal arbitration board. Her work has also enhanced access to justice through engagement with other areas of the UK legal system.
Improving ombudsman practice in UK local government
As its Chief Executive confirms, Creutzfeldt’s research directly informed the Ombudsman Association’s 2017 “best practice” framework, which applies to all 47 UK and Ireland members.
This is the UK’s first industry-wide complaints-handling best practice framework. It specifies the optimal standards for such services, which members can use to raise their own performance, and acts as a benchmark to which alternative standards frameworks are compared.
Professor Creutzfeldt’s research has also helped the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) to understand why customers bring complaints and to better identify the types of remedies they seek.
The findings helped to address the misconception that most people complain because they want compensation and have supported the LGO in encouraging local authorities to take a less defensive and adversarial approach to complaints.
– The Ombudsman and Chair at the Local Government Ombudsman on Professor Creutzfeldt’s research
“This, alongside our customer satisfaction research,” the Ombudsman and Chair at the LGO says, “is supporting us in improving the service we provide and is informing the way we communicate what our service is about.”
The Chief Executive of the Ombudsman Services particularly praises Creutzfeldt’s “insightful and provocative” work on protecting energy consumers, which addresses issues like fuel poverty.
“She has encouraged a person-centred approach which regulatory and redress models can sometimes miss in their focus on the macro issues of economic regulation,” they said, adding: “We have implemented some of her recommendations into our everyday practice.”
Actioning the new consumer focus reflected in their Energy Sector Report 2019, the Ombudsman Services went on to appoint a Customer Experience Manager and create surveys of its own. Sent to energy business partners to benchmark customer experience scores, the Energy Ombudsman is now able to improve and enhance its services in a customer-friendly way.
Enhancing alternative dispute resolution in Germany
The Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection commissioned Professor Creutzfeldt and Dr Felix Steffek, of the University of Cambridge, to investigate their residual Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) body between 2017 and 2020.
Though using ADR would help businesses and consumers to avoid lengthy and expensive court proceedings, the researchers found that many businesses were unwilling to participate due to cost.
These findings directly led to the Ministry amending the legislation to lower business fees, and the establishment of the “Center for Arbitration eV” by federal government.
This Center is a universal arbitration board that offers “a real alternative to state court proceedings”, particularly in “low value disputes”.
With costs and time capped at €800 and 90 days respectively, it empowers consumers to resolve disputes worth up to €50,000.
The decisions made on the basis of Creutzfeldt and Steffek’s research findings have made ADR more appealing to businesses which, in turn, makes things better for consumers.
Advancing access to justice in other areas of the UK legal system
Professor Creutzfeldt became an independent academic adviser to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, in April 2017, by invitation of its Chair Rob Behrens, CBE.
Praising Creutzfeldt for her “open, non-dogmatic but rigorous approach to conversation and debate”, Behrens highlights how she has helped “to facilitate the better joining-up of courts, tribunals and ombuds”, through “conversation and exchange on an inter-personal level between people who rarely have the opportunity of being in the same room”.
Creutzfeldt was able to do this by drawing on her strong stakeholder base, developed through her work with the Administrative Justice Council (AJC) – the only body overseeing the UK’s entire administrative justice system.
As co-chair of AJC’s academic panel, at the invitation of the Senior President of the Tribunals, Sir Ernest Ryder, “Naomi has helped identify and draft the headline themes that are at the core of the council’s business plan”.
This work has led to a number of research projects which, Sir Ernest believes, will have a “considerable” impact – especially in terms of improving access to justice, including within healthcare settings.
In July 2019, Creutzfeldt was also invited to join the Evaluation Sub-group of the Legal Support Advisory Group, which advises the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on how to best support “the most vulnerable in society”.
As part of this work, Creutzfeldt advised Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service Reform Programme on how they ought to evaluate the ways in which the increased use of audio-video (AV) hearings, due to COVID, could impact access to justice.
As a member of the Data and Analytics Services Directorate at the MoJ states, Creutzfeldt’s contributions added “value to the project by drawing on [her] research and advising on research with users of the justice system in terms of procedural fairness, user satisfaction and experience of digitalisation”, helping to ensure the best possible design for evaluating the AV strategy.
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