Motor Ombudsman unveils 2020 vision

The Motor Ombudsman has outlined its priorities for the next 12 months, including further recruitment, upgraded IT infrastructure, and new motoring advice for drivers.

Further recruitment is planned within the Customer Contact and Dispute Resolution teams, departments that have already seen a rise in headcount throughout 2019.

In addition, changes will be made to the organisational structure with the addition of newly created roles, in order to drive further efficiencies in the handling of contacts and cases, and to supply adjudication outcomes and ombudsman final decisions within shorter timeframes.

Next year will equally see the implementation of several upgrades to The Motor Ombudsman’s back office IT infrastructure, which will give businesses and consumers access to more comprehensive data and case status updates.

This will be complemented by new content and motoring advice on the front facing areas of The Motor Ombudsman’s website, including expanding the library of articles within its online Knowledge Base.

To help ensure that The Motor Ombudsman continues to address the needs of motorists and organisations, against a backdrop of a rapidly changing automotive landscape, the scope and content of the four Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI)-approved Codes of Practice will also be reviewed in 2020.

This will lay the foundation for The Motor Ombudsman to cover additional areas within its best practice guidelines for accredited businesses.

Bill Fennell, chief ombudsman and managing director at The Motor Ombudsman, said: “In the latter half of 2019, we carried out a comprehensive evaluation of our activities and processes as part of our annual review of our five-year plan. This enabled us to steer our activities for 2020, and to evolve and strengthen the work that we do as part of our core roles as an Ombudsman. It is certainly shaping up to be yet another busy and exciting year.”