Energy Ombudsman Wait Halved, Broadband Compensation Rises, FOS Limit Hits £455k: What's New in Your Consumer Rights
This week the rules that decide how long you have to wait before a regulator will actually help you with your dispute have moved in your favour. Three changes matter most. One is enormous and only landed yesterday.
The big one: you'll be able to escalate energy disputes after 4 weeks, not 8
On 22nd April the government announced major reform of Ofgem and the Energy Ombudsman. The headline change for households and small businesses:
- The wait before you can escalate to the Energy Ombudsman is being halved from 8 weeks to 4 weeks.
- The Ombudsman's average resolution time is being cut from 6 weeks to 4.
- Suppliers will be forced to pay compensation when they fail to honour Ombudsman rulings (the government noted that almost 1 in 10 consumer decisions are currently implemented late or not at all).
- Automatic compensation expands to cover excessively long call wait times, unexpectedly high bills caused by un-adjusted direct debits, and suppliers who simply ignore complaints.
If you're stuck in a complaint loop with British Gas, EDF, Octopus, OVO, E.ON Next, Scottish Power or any other major supplier, this is the most consumer-friendly change to UK energy disputes in years. From the moment you raise a complaint, you'll only need to wait a month before an independent body can take it off the supplier's hands.
The catch: the implementation date and required legislation haven't been published yet. We'll update our energy escalation flow the moment the SI is laid. In the meantime, the announcement itself has political force: even before the legal change, suppliers know the direction of travel.
The smaller (but more immediate) one: broadband and mobile compensation just went up
If your broadband or landline goes down, your engineer doesn't show up, or your new service is delayed, the major UK ISPs now have to pay you more under Ofcom's auto-compensation scheme. Effective 1st April 2026:
| Trigger | Old amount | New amount |
|---|---|---|
| Total loss of service / delayed repair | £8.40/day | £10.34/day |
| Missed engineer appointment | £31.63 | £32.31 |
| Delayed start of new service | £6.10/day | £6.46/day |
The scheme is voluntary for ISPs but covers about 97% of landline customers and 91% of broadband customers: including BT, EE, Plusnet, Hyperoptic, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media, Vodafone and Zen Internet.
Combine that with two other Ofcom changes already in force this month:
- 8 to 6 week wait for the Communications Ombudsman. From 8th April 2026, if your provider hasn't sorted your complaint within 6 weeks, you can go to the Ombudsman two weeks earlier than before. (Applies only to complaints raised on or after 8th April: earlier complaints stick to the old 8-week rule.)
- 30-day right to leave on mid-contract price rises. Any mid-contract price increase must give you 30 days to exit without exit fees, must be quoted in pounds and pence (not "CPI plus 3.9%"), and must be clearly notified.
Three changes, all leaning towards "you should be able to leave faster, get paid more, and escalate sooner". If you're unhappy with your provider, this April genuinely is the easiest moment in years to do something about it.
And quietly: the FOS will now compensate you up to £455,000
If you have a complaint against a financial services firm, bank, insurer, lender, mortgage broker, the maximum the Financial Ombudsman Service can order them to pay you went up by £10,000 on 1st April 2026, to £455,000 (for acts or omissions on or after 1st April 2019; £205,000 for older complaints). It's not a number most people will hit, but for anyone with a serious mis-selling or pension complaint it's worth knowing.
What's coming
Two things to watch over the next few months:
- Motor finance redress scheme starts paying out from 30th June 2026. Around 12.1 million car finance agreements taken between 2007 and 2024 are eligible. The average payout is expected to be £829, and crucially the scheme is opt-out: your lender will contact you automatically. You shouldn't need to pay a claims management company to "claim it for you", and you shouldn't sign over a percentage of your settlement to anyone.
- Buy Now Pay Later joins the FOS in July 2026. From this summer, complaints about Klarna, Clearpay, PayPal Pay-in-3, Zilch and Laybuy can finally be taken to the Financial Ombudsman if the provider won't fix them.
Want EvenStance to walk you through any of this? Start a case in 60 seconds and we'll route you to the right ombudsman, the right deadline, and the right compensation rate: with the new figures already plugged in.
