The Office of Trading is backing calls to allow the financial services ombudsman the discretion to consider ’time-barred’ complaints.

OFT chairman Martin Perkins said the Financial Services Act dictated that the OFT ’must decline to deal with a complaint where it appears to it that the dispute was referred to it more than two years after the act or omission giving rise to it, or reasonably ought to have come to the knowledge of the complainant and, in any case, more than six years after the act or omission’.

But, in the UK, the ombudsman has discretion to extend that time limit in ’exceptional circumstances’.

Mr Perkins, responding to a House of Keys question from Lawrie Hooper (LibVannin, Ramsey) told the House of Keys: ’The Office of Fair Trading feels it would be beneficial to have some discretion.’

It would ask the Treasury to consider a change, the next time it amended the Financial Services Act, but did not think the concern was so pressing to warrant drawing up stand alone legislation.