Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what plans her Department has to establish service standards to improve the effectiveness of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS); and pursuant to the Answer of 16 October 2025 to Question 77954 on Financial Ombudsman Service, when she expects to publish a response to the consultation on improving the regulatory coherence between the FOS and the Financial Conduct Authority.

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) sets itself performance targets in its annual Plans and Budgets publication.

Ensuring timely outcomes is one of the FOS’s main priorities for 2025-26, as outlined in its annual Plans and Budget publication on 1 April 2025.

In 2023-24, the FOS resolved over half of its cases within three months.

The FOS regularly publishes data on its casework, including progress against its annual performance targets. The latest complaints data is available at https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/data-insight/our-insight and its Annual Reports and Accounts can be found at https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/who-we-are/governance-funding/annual-reports-accounts

The government is considering the feedback received to its recent consultation on the FOS, and will publish a response soon.