To demonstrate to our customers that we deal with complaints about our service fairly and thoroughly we appoint an independent person as an External Reviewer. Their role is to look at a sample of complaints about our service and to report on how well we have responded to them.

Reviewers are appointed for a maximum of six years. The reviewer since July 2026 is Chris Gill, Professor of socio-legal studies at the University of Glasgow. He has extensive experience of how Ombudsman schemes work, including leading an independent review of LGSCO in 2024, as part of the International Ombudsman Institute peer review panel.

Chris has worked with many other similar organisations across the world including the New South Wales (Australian) Ombudsman, the Canadian Ombudsman for Responsible Enterprise, the Legal Ombudsman and Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) and Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO).

Our previous External Reviewer (August 2020 - March 2026) was Professor Cosmo Graham, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Leicester. 

Please note the External Reviewer cannot get involved in specific complaint casework . Their role is entirely separate from our process for challenging our decisions. Information about how you can request a review of our decisions is given here.