Office for Legal Complaints

Elizabeth France CBE

As well as being Chair of the Office for Legal Complaints, Elizabeth France is: Chair of the UK Public Affairs Council; a Member of the British Transport Police Authority; Vice President of Aberystwyth University and a member of the General Assembly of Manchester University.

Until 1 July 2009 Elizabeth was Chief Ombudsman and Chief Executive of the Ombudsman Service Ltd., which provided the Telecommunications Ombudsman Service (Otelo), the Energy Ombudsman Service and the Surveyors Ombudsman Service. She was a Non Executive Director of the Serious Organised Crime Agency from 2005-2010.

Elizabeth began her career in the Home Office, resigning to become the Data Protection Registrar in September 1994 and becoming Information Commissioner in January 2001. 

Elizabeth has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Universities of De Montfort, Loughborough and Bradford and is a Fellow of Aberystwyth University.  In June 2002 she was awarded a CBE, for services to data protection.

Rosemary Carter

Rosemary Carter is a solicitor and has worked in private practice in central London and East Anglia for thirty years. She is also a trained mediator. Rosemary is currently a non-executive director of the Child Maintenance & Enforcement Commission, a member of the RICS Surveyors Ombudsman Scheme Board and a member of the General Dental Council. Until recently, she was a trustee of the charity, Gingerbread. She has long been interested in alternative redress systems and professional regulation and is a former member of the Law Society, Nursing & Midwifery and Civil Mediation Councils.

Margaret Doyle

Margaret is an independent mediator and consultant in alternative dispute resolution (ADR), with a focus on disputes affecting individuals as citizens and consumers. She mediates in cases involving special educational needs and disability discrimination, involving both public- and private-sector bodies.

She has carried out research and consultancy projects on ADR and access to justice for, among others, the Public Law Project, Advice Services Alliance and National Consumer Council (now Consumer Focus), and is currently a consultant researcher with the Public Law Project on a Nuffield-funded empirical study of mediation and judicial review.

She is also a non-executive director of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education.

Tony Foster

Previously a Director of ICI Chemicals & Polymers Ltd and Chief Executive of ICI Chlorchemicals Business, he became a full-time member of the Criminal Cases Review Commission from 1997 to 2006 and was a member of the Council of the Competition Commission from 2003 to 2009. He is now a non-executive director of the Government Agency, Animal Health, a member of the Financial Protection Committee of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, a member of the Disciplinary Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and a member of the Board of Trustees of Victim Support.

Professor Mary Seneviratne

Mary Seneviratne is Professor of Law and Director of Research at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University. She has an LLB from Leeds University, an MA and PhD from Sheffield University, and qualified as a solicitor in 1972. After a brief period of practice in local government, she joined Sheffield City Polytechnic (as it was then) as a lecturer in Law, and has also worked at Sheffield University as a Research Fellow.

She joined Nottingham Law School in 1998, as a Research Professor, and has been Head of Department and Associate Dean, before taking on her present role as Director of Research. She has researched and published widely in relation to ombudsmen, complaints procedures, civil and administrative justice, alternative dispute resolution, and governance of the professions. She is the author of Ombudsmen: Public Services and Administrative Justice (Butterworths, 2002), The Legal Profession: Regulation and the Consumer (Sweet and Maxwell, 1999), and the “Ombudsman Title” in Atkins Court Forms (LexisNexis, 2008).

She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Socio-Legal Studies Association, a member of the British and Irish Ombudsman Association, a member of the Administriative Justice and Tribunals Council and the substitute member for the UK on the Council of Europe Group of Independent Experts on the Charter for Local Self Government. In 1999, she gave evidence in relation to the public sector ombudsmen review to the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, and she was the advisor to the Justice 1 Committee of the Scottish Parliament in its enquiry into the regulation of the legal profession from 2001 to 2002.

Brian Woods-Scawen

Brian is a non-executive Chairman or Board member of a number of organisations in the private and public sectors. Amongst his appointments, he is Chairman of West Bromwich Building Society, a non-executive Board member of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and Treasurer of Warwick University.

He is also a strategic adviser to a firm of solicitors. Brian is a Chartered Accountant. He was formerly Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers Supervisory Board and a member of the PwC Global Board. At PwC, Brian was founding editor of the firm's Annual Survey of Financial Management in Law Firms.

David Thomas

Qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales in 1969 and as a solicitor in Ireland in 1991, he led a firm of lawyers with Offices in Liverpool and London. He has lectured on practice management, quality, commercial contracts and competitive tendering. Previously the Banking Ombudsman, since 2005 he has been Corporate Director and Principal Ombudsman at the Financial Ombudsman Service responsible for corporate policy, which includes: legislation and rules; relations with government, regulators and the European Commission; corporate planning; and cases with wider implications.