Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether Ofcom review individual cases where telephone and broadband failures are dealt with in an unsatisfactory manner.

These are matters for Ofcom, the UK’s designated enforcer of consumer law and regulation for the UK communications industries. Ofcom do not handle individual complaints, but look at how problems affect UK consumers as a whole and then make decisions on whether to open enforcement investigations. Ofcom also has powers to introduce new consumer regulations under its General Conditions of Entitlement, which apply to all providers of electronic communications networks and services must comply with if they want to provide services in the UK.

In March 2017, Ofcom consulted on introducing an automatic compensation scheme for fixed broadband and landline telecoms to protect consumers who suffer from specific service failures. Subsequently, industry agreed to introduce a voluntary automatic compensation scheme, which came into effect from 1 April 2019. The new scheme applies to new orders placed or problems reported from 1 April 2019 and sets out compensation amounts for delayed repairs following a loss of service, missed repairs or provision appointments, and delays to the start of a new service. Ofcom plan to review the scheme after it has been in place for 12 months.

Where an individual feels that their service fault has been dealt with in an unsatisfactory manner by their telecoms provider, and if their complaint has not been resolved after eight weeks, they can refer their case to an independent Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme. ADR schemes can review individual cases and any decisions they make are binding on telecoms providers. There are two ADR schemes for telecoms, the Ombudsman Services (OS) and the Communications and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme (CISAS), and all communications providers must be members of one of these schemes.