FOS IS NOW UNDER PUBLIC SCRUTINY
This is the beginning of the most serious public accountability action ever taken against the Financial Ombudsman Service in the United Kingdom.
Gary Smith
@G8GWS has just published The FOS Files.
Part One.
This is the opening of a documented, legally structured case series that is going to run through thousands of Financial Ombudsman Service
@financialombuds decisions, name individual Ombudsmen by name, and form the evidentiary backbone of a judicial review that is already in preparation.
Part One concerns Complaint Reference 21518476. Shawbrook Bank. Ombudsman Will Culley. Submitted November 2018. Ombudsman provisional decision April 2026.
Seven years.
At the centre of that decision sits one assertion. That a fractional product was "asset backed" and included a share in future sale proceeds. That single claim determined the entire outcome.
No contractual basis was identified. No legal mechanism was explained. No evidence was provided that this right has ever been realised in practice. The complainant asked directly where this right comes from. No answer came.
Not in seven years.
But here is what makes this truly alarming.
The same assertion appears across multiple FOS decisions on the same product. In some cases it is used to uphold a complaint. In others it is used to reject one. Same premise. Contradictory outcomes. No explanation in either direction.
That is an unproven premise being applied arbitrarily to produce whatever outcome was already decided.
FOS operates under binding FCA rules. DISP 3.5.2R requires reasons. DISP 3.4.1R requires fairness. DISP 3.6.4R requires actual legal analysis applied to actual facts. These are not guidelines. They are legal obligations. And they were not met.
Gary Smith is Legal Director of
@MeridianLegals and founder of the FOS Litigation Group. He already won a High Court judicial review against FOS in 2023. He is now preparing a second one, backed by over 1,000 documented cases showing the same structural failures.
The FOS Litigation Group is going through every decision. They are naming every Ombudsman. They are documenting every cut-and-paste ruling. Every unanswered question. Every predetermined outcome dressed up as a reasoned decision.
This is Part One.
If you have had an FOS complaint dismissed with reasoning you could never verify, questions that were never answered, or a decision that felt written before your evidence was even read, your case may be part of this pattern.
Contact Gary Smith
@G8GWS directly.
@MeridianLegals / 0121 516 0675
Gary's full six-page document is linked in the comments. Read it and share it.
Let's make history.
Together
@TransparencyTF
@premnsikka
@johnmcdonnellMP