What to Do if You Disagree with an Ombudsman Decision

An ombudsman's final decision is the end of the free route. Neither side can appeal it to another ombudsman or to court just because they disagree with it¹. What you can do is decline to accept it. If you accept the final decision, it is legally binding on the financial business, which cannot withdraw from the process¹. It only binds you if you choose to accept it².

If you reject the decision, or simply do not reply in time, you are free to take the same complaint to court instead. The service itself says that if you are not happy with its final answer, it cannot help you any more, but you can take your complaint to court if you want³. Consumers can still go to court if they do not want to accept the Ombudsman's decision⁴.

The important thing to understand is that there are two different kinds of disagreement. You can disagree with the outcome, which is a matter of whether you accept it or go to court. Or you can disagree with how the case was handled, which is a separate complaint about the ombudsman service itself. The two have different routes, and mixing them up wastes time.

An ombudsman's final decision ends the free route

The Financial Ombudsman Service works in stages, and it helps to know where you are in them. A complaint is usually looked at first by an investigator, who sets out a view. If one or both sides disagree with the investigator's view, they can ask for the complaint to be referred to one of the ombudsmen, who takes a fresh look, including any new evidence¹. If an ombudsman's decision differs from the investigator's, they will send a provisional decision explaining why, before a final decision is issued¹.

The final decision is the end of that process. The service will tell you whether it believes you have been treated unfairly or not, and if it does not uphold your complaint, it will tell you why and explain how it reached its decision⁵. Once the final decision is issued, the free route is closed. There is no further internal appeal, and no second ombudsman to take it to.

That is not the same as being left with nothing. The decision is an offer of a settlement, and the choice of whether to take it is yours. If you accept, the business is bound. If you do not, you keep your right to pursue the matter elsewhere. The trade-off is real: accepting usually gets you a defined outcome quickly, while rejecting it means starting again in a forum with its own costs, rules and risks.

Can I appeal a Financial Ombudsman Service final decision?

No. The service is explicit that if either side is unhappy with the decision, they cannot appeal an ombudsman's final decision to another ombudsman¹. Independent guidance puts it the same way: in the private sector, an ombudsman's decision is final and you cannot appeal if you disagree with it⁶.

This is a deliberate feature of how ombudsman schemes work, not an oversight. The scheme exists to give consumers a free, informal alternative to court, and a decision that could be appealed indefinitely would not settle anything. The finality is what makes the business accept the outcome.

What you can do instead depends on what you disagree with:

• The outcome. You can decline to accept the decision, which leaves you free to go to court³.
• The reasoning. If the case has not yet reached a final decision, you can ask for it to be looked at again, or for it to go to an ombudsman¹.
• The handling. If you think the service itself got the process wrong, that is a complaint about the ombudsman, dealt with separately.

If you are still at the earlier stage, the position is different. If you do not like the first answer, you can ask the service to look at your complaint again, and it will think about it and give you a final answer³. That is the point to raise anything you think was missed.

Is the firm bound by the decision if I accept it?

Yes, and this is the part that gives the decision its value. If a consumer accepts the final decision, it is legally binding on the financial business, which cannot simply walk away from the process¹. The same principle is set out in the service's own consultation material: final determinations, once accepted by the complainant, are binding on both the complainant and the respondent firm⁷.

The asymmetry is the whole design. Any decision by the ombudsman is binding on the company, but it is only binding on you if you choose to accept the decision². The business does not get to reject an outcome it dislikes. You do.

More generally, an ombudsman's decision is usually binding on the trader, but only if the trader is part of the scheme⁸. That matters if your complaint is about a firm outside the Financial Ombudsman Service's remit, because the scheme's power to bind depends on the firm being covered in the first place. If you are unsure whether a firm is covered, that is worth checking before you rely on the ombudsman route at all.

How long do I have to accept or reject a final decision?

The decision itself sets the deadline, and the date it gives you is the one that counts. The consequence of missing it is specific: if the service does not hear from you within the specified timeframe, then in most cases you will be treated as having rejected the decision, and it is not binding on the business¹.

That cuts both ways. If the decision offers you something you want, silence loses it. If the decision offers you nothing, silence costs you nothing and preserves your position. Either way, the deadline is not a formality, and replying in writing before it passes is the safe course, whichever way you are going.

For context on how long the process takes before you get there, the Energy Ombudsman gives its decision within 6 to 8 weeks of taking up a case⁹. The Financial Ombudsman Service's own time limits for bringing a complaint are separate: six years from when you were sold the product, or three years from when you noticed, or reasonably became aware, something was wrong, whichever is later¹⁰. Those limits govern whether the service can look at your complaint at all, not how long you have to accept a decision once it is made.

Rejecting the decision leaves you free to go to court

If you do not accept the decision, the matter is not resolved, and you can take it to court. The service's own consumer leaflet says plainly that if you are not happy with its final answer, it cannot help you any more, but you can take your complaint to court if you want³. The service confirms that consumers can still go to court if they do not want to accept the Ombudsman's decision⁴.

Before you go down that road, it is worth being clear about what changes:

• Cost. The ombudsman is free. Court is not, and you may face the other side's costs if you lose, depending on the track and the court.
• Procedure. The ombudsman investigates and decides. In court, you have to build and present your own case.
• Time. Court takes longer than an ombudsman decision, and the timetable is set by the court.
• Evidence. The ombudsman can decide on what is fair. A court decides on the law and the facts as proved.

The ombudsman's approach to putting things right is not the same as a court's. Its general approach is that the customer should be put back in the position they would have been in if the problem had not happened, and it may ask the business to pay compensation for distress or inconvenience¹¹. A court's remedy is different in kind, and the outcome is less predictable.

Going to court after a rejected decision

The route to court depends on where you are in the UK and how much is at stake. For smaller sums, the small claims track in England and Wales, the simple procedure in Scotland, and the small claims procedure in Northern Ireland are designed for people without lawyers. These are the practical alternatives to an ombudsman decision you have rejected.

There is a wider point about how ombudsmen and courts interact. If you disagree with the answer you get from one of the two ombudsmen, it is very unlikely that you will be able to take your complaint to the other, although you may still be able to take it to court¹². The Pensions Ombudsman also cannot consider complaints that are already being looked at, or have already been decided, by a court or employment tribunal, and the same applies if another ombudsman has already considered the complaint¹³. So the choice between the ombudsman and the court is closer to a fork than a sequence.

One practical point: if you are considering court, the strength of your case matters more than your dissatisfaction with the decision. An ombudsman not upholding a complaint is not evidence that the complaint was strong. In one case study, the service did not agree that a payday lender had been wrong to give a customer the money, so it did not think the lender should have to refund anything¹⁴. In another, it did not uphold the complaint at all¹⁵. A court may see the same facts differently, but it may not.

When you can ask the ombudsman to look again

There is a stage before the final decision where asking for a second look is exactly the right move. If one or both sides disagree with the investigator's view, they can ask for the complaint to be referred to one of the ombudsmen, who takes a fresh look, including any new evidence¹. If you do not like the first answer, you can ask the service to look at your complaint again, and it will think about it and give you a final answer³.

This is the moment to put in anything you have not already sent: documents, a clearer account of what happened, or evidence that answers a point the investigator raised. The ombudsman stage is a genuine reconsideration, not a rubber stamp, and it is the last chance to influence the outcome before the decision becomes final.

Once the final decision is issued, that door closes. There is no further internal review of the merits. The only remaining options are to accept, to reject and go to court, or to complain about the handling of the case rather than the outcome.

Can I apply for judicial review of an ombudsman decision?

Judicial review is a different animal from an appeal, and it is important not to confuse the two. It does not ask whether the decision was right. It asks whether the decision-maker had the power to make it, or followed the correct process.

For a public sector ombudsman, you can challenge a decision only through a judicial review, which is a serious and complicated process, and you would need expert legal help to do this¹⁶. The same wording appears in independent guidance on ombudsman complaints⁶.

The Pensions Ombudsman gives a concrete example of when this arises. If it made a decision on a complaint that was outside its jurisdiction, it could be challenged through a process called judicial review, and a court could set that decision aside¹³. That is a narrow ground: it is about whether the ombudsman should have been deciding the complaint at all, not about whether the answer was fair.

For most consumers who simply disagree with an outcome, judicial review is not the route. It is expensive, it is technical, and it does not re-examine the merits. If you think a decision was made without the power to make it, that is a question for a solicitor, not something to attempt alone.

Can I use a claims management company to challenge a decision?

A claims management company cannot overturn an ombudsman's decision, because nobody can. What a claims management company can do is handle a complaint on your behalf, and if you are unhappy with how it does that, you have your own route to complain about it.

The Financial Ombudsman Service can help people with complaints about claims management companies¹⁷. If you are not happy with the outcome of your complaint to a claims management company, you can make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service¹⁸. Separately, the Claims Management Ombudsman is independent and free to use, and it can help you resolve disputes with claims management companies¹⁹.

The practical warning is about cost. The ombudsman route is free to you, and a claims management company typically charges for work you can do yourself. If a company suggests it can appeal or overturn a decision, that is not something the rules allow, and it is worth checking what it is actually offering before you sign anything.

Complaining about how the ombudsman handled your case

If your complaint is not about the outcome but about the way the service dealt with you, that is a different matter, and it is dealt with by the service itself rather than by an appeal.

The distinction matters because the two get confused. Disagreeing with a decision is not a service complaint. A service complaint is about delay, poor communication, a failure to consider evidence you sent, or a mistake in the process. Those are things the service can look at and, where it finds fault, put right.

If you are unhappy with advice you have been given, or think you have been mis-sold something, you can complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service, and it can order your adviser to pay compensation²⁰. That is a complaint about the firm, not about the ombudsman, but it illustrates the principle: the service's power is to order redress from the business, not to review its own decisions on the merits.

Where a complaint has already been decided by another ombudsman or by a court, the service cannot take it on. The Pensions Ombudsman cannot consider complaints already being looked at, or already decided, by a court or employment tribunal, and the same applies if another ombudsman has already considered the complaint¹³. So if you have already been through one scheme, a second one is unlikely to be open to you.

Where to get free help

The ombudsman service itself is free, and so is the advice available on how to use it. If you are weighing up whether to accept a decision or go to court, the sensible step is to get independent advice before the deadline passes, because the deadline is the one thing you cannot get back.

Free and impartial sources include:

• MoneyHelper, the government-backed service for money questions.
• Citizens Advice, which can help with complaints about banks and building societies¹⁹.
• The Financial Ombudsman Service, which explains how it reaches decisions and what to do if you do not want to accept one¹.
• The Pensions Ombudsman, for pension complaints, which sets out what it can and cannot do¹³.

If your complaint is about a firm that has failed, or about compensation rather than a decision, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme is a separate route with its own rules. If you are still deciding whether to use the ombudsman at all, taking a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service sets out how the process works from the start, and which ombudsman helps if you are not sure which scheme covers your complaint.