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New estate agent ombudsman 'delayed'

The creation of an ombudsman for estate agents has been delayed by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), the BBC reports.

Originally scheduled to come into being on April 6th, the new body is planned to deal with customer complaints made against agents.

The OFT has cited unexpected hold-ups to do with the four applications submitted by bodies wishing to run the service as the reason for the delay.

Creating a single ombudsman service was proposed by the government as a way of improving the current procedure.

A variety of different schemes only serve around 60 per cent of agents - and a higher proportion of overall complaints are made against those which are not covered.

Mark McLaren at Which?, speaking to the broadcaster, commented: "We do not know what the reason for the delay is but we hope any delay will be very short."

According to the BBC, the estate agency industry is worth around £185 billion per year in the UK.

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