The High Court has quashed four Financial Ombudsman Service jurisdiction decisions after Barclays Bank UK PLC, National Westminster Bank PLC, Vanquis Bank Limited and Santander UK PLC challenged the ombudsman’s attempt to treat alleged uncorrected unfairness in consumer credit relationships as a continuing route into older complaints.
In Barclays and others v Financial Ombudsman Service Limited, Mr Justice Dexter Dias held in the King’s Bench Division Administrative Court that all four ombudsman decisions rested on an error of law and could not stand.
The judgment, handed down remotely on 24 June 2026, is unusually important because the Financial Conduct Authority intervened against the position taken by the Financial Ombudsman Service, which the court described as the first known instance of that kind.
The banks challenged FOS decisions made in July 2024 involving credit card and overdraft complaints, where the ombudsmen had relied on section 140A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and the Supreme Court authorities in Smith v Royal Bank of Scotland plc and Plevin v Paragon Personal Finance Limited to assert jurisdiction over the entire credit relationship.
The court rejected that approach, holding that the claimed corrective responsibility did not exist for the jurisdictional purpose advanced by the ombudsman.
Practitioner consequence now lies in the boundary between what FOS may consider as background and what it may investigate and redress as a complaint within time. Mr Justice Dexter Dias accepted that an ombudsman may look at the wider history of a credit relationship when applying the fair and reasonable test under section 228 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
What the judgment rejects is the more expansive proposition that a failure to correct alleged unfairness can itself create a fresh event under DISP 2.8.2 R, allowing FOS to reopen the whole credit relationship for investigation and redress.
The ruling also carries immediate significance for firms advising banks, lenders and claims-facing financial institutions. Barclays was represented by Javan Herberg KC and Ajay Ratan, instructed by Eversheds Sutherland; NatWest by John Taylor KC, instructed by Pinsent Masons; Vanquis by John Taylor KC, instructed by TLT LLP; and Santander by Saima Hanif KC, instructed by Addleshaw Goddard. FOS was represented by James Strachan KC and Adam Boukraa, while the FCA was represented by Monica Carss-Frisk KC and Celia Rooney.
The practical effect is not that stale facts become irrelevant. The court made clear that older conduct may still form part of the context for deciding what is fair and reasonable where an in-time complaint exists. The limit is jurisdictional: FOS cannot convert the whole credit history into a live complaint by relying on a non-existent continuing duty to correct unfairness. That distinction will matter in complaint triage, judicial review risk assessment and settlement strategy.
The Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Conduct Authority will now have to recalibrate complaint-handling practice around DISP 2.8.2 R, while banking litigation teams sharpen arguments over which acts or omissions are truly in time.