ZAHIDA MANZOOR CBE APPOINTED LEGAL SERVICES OMBUDSMAN

30 Jan 2003 01:45 PM

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, has appointed Zahida Manzoor as the chief public watchdog on the standards of handling complaints by the legal professions. Ms Manzoor takes over as the Legal Services Ombudsman for England and Wales on 3 March 2003.

Ms Manzoor, director of her own management consultancy company, has served on both the NHS Policy Board and the Commission for Racial Equality and has chaired Bradford Health Authority and the NHS's Northern and Yorkshire regional executive. In 1992 she was recognised as Yorkshire Asian Business Personality of the Year and in 1999 she was voted National Asian Woman of the Year.

The Legal Services Ombudsman's investigating teams handle over 1,500 individual complaints per year from members of the public who are dissatisfied with the legal professions' own complaints procedures. The Ombudsman has powers to investigate how complaints against lawyers are handled by their professional bodies, to recommend decisions to be reconsidered and to order compensation to be paid where appropriate.

Independent of both Government and the legal professions, the Ombudsman maintains a permanent check on the Law Society's Office for the Supervision of Solicitors and on how the General Council of the Bar handles complaints against barristers. It also monitors the Institute of Legal Executives, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers and the Chartered Institute of Patents Agents.

The Lord Chancellor said, " The legal professions generally provide high standards of service when people need access to justice or want to defend or assert their rights. But the public must also be confident that there are effective ways of complaining against lawyers if things go wrong. The independent Legal Services Ombudsman is a very powerful watchdog for the public in ensuring that the lawyers' own complaints procedures are fair, open and efficient.

"I am certain that Zahida Manzoor, with her wide experience of serving the public in different fields, will build on the reputation of the Legal Service Ombudsman's office for monitoring and improving standards of handling complaints by the legal professions."

Ms Manzoor, who is appointed for three years, succeeds Ms Ann Abraham who held the post from September 1997 until November 2002 when she became Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration and Health Service Commissioner for England. The Lord Chancellor thanked Mr Paul Salvidge, formally director of Consumer Affairs and Competition Policy at the Department for Trade and Industry, who has acted as Ombudsman in the meantime. The Office of the Legal Service Ombudsman is in Manchester.

Notes to Editors:

1. Ms Manzoor (44) is co-Founder and Marketing Director of her own company, Intellisys Ltd, which advises clients on customer relationship management. She was formerly a member of the NHS Policy Board (1997 to 2001), Regional Chair of the NHS Executive, Northern and Yorkshire Regions (1997 to 2001), Commissioner and Deputy Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality (1993 to 1998) and Chair of the Bradford Health Authority (1992 to 1997). She was recognised as National Asian Woman of the Year in 1999 and Yorkshire Asian Business Personality of the year in 1992, and has been awarded the CBE. She has been a Trustee of the NSPCC (since 1997), Patron of the Ethnic Minority Disability Association (since 1999), Vice Patron of Crimestoppers (since 1998), a member of the Cabinet Office's Diversity Focus Group (since 1999) and acts as an Independent Assessor for the Foreign Office (since 1998).

2. The post of Legal Services Ombudsman was created in 1990 by the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 and covers England and Wales. The Act provides that the Legal Services Ombudsman must not be a lawyer.

3. The Access to Justice Act 1999 gave the Legal Services Ombudsman powers to make orders requiring the legal services professional bodies and individual practitioners to take action in respect of making appropriate compensation to complainants - rather than recommendations.

ENDS

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