The High Court quashed part of a decision by the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman (FSPO) concerning a complaint by Joseph Baynes and Ann Baynes, and ordered that the time-limit issue be reconsidered by a new decision maker.
In a ruling delivered on 11 January 2023, Mr Justice Cian Ferriter made final orders following his judgment of 2 December 2022 in the applicants’ judicial review. The court set aside the part of the FSPO’s 5 August 2021 determination that declined to allow a longer period for the applicants to make their complaint under section 51(2)(a)(iii) of the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman Act 2017.
The judge ordered the FSPO to reconsider whether the complaint met the statutory time limits under that provision. The matter is to be determined by a new decision maker, on submissions already made and any further submissions from the parties, including submissions responding to information the new decision maker may seek.
The court dismissed the remainder of the judicial review. It did not quash the FSPO’s decision under section 51(2)(a)(ii), which the judge found had been lawfully reached. The ruling records that the applicants had been unsuccessful on a number of key grounds of challenge.
The applicants had sought to have the entire FSPO decision quashed and argued they should receive their full costs because they said they had been entirely successful. The FSPO submitted that the applicants had lost on two of three grounds, had abandoned a fourth, and had succeeded only on the challenge to the decision under section 51(2)(a)(iii). It argued for a partial costs award of no more than 50%.
The judge said the applicants were not entirely successful, so section 169(1) of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 did not apply. In setting costs, he considered that much of the pleadings and affidavit evidence would have been needed for the successful part of the case, and that the hearing would likely have taken most of a day even if the applicants had focused only on that issue. He ordered the applicants to recover 60% of their costs from the FSPO, with the amount to be adjudicated if the parties could not agree.