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I’m quite interested in the press release the OFT made last week about its criteria for Competition Casework. In the press release they state the criteria to be used as to whether the OFT takes on a new case or whether they continue with investigations they are already carrying out.

John Fingleton, OFT Chief Executive said:

‘The OFT recently announced changes to the way we operate which will allow us to focus on high impact projects and to look more systematically at whole markets and issues. We aim to use all the tools available to us to improve markets where they are not operating effectively. Our objective is to make the OFT more efficient and to concentrate our effort on clear strategic goals.’

One of the reasons I find it interesting is that it is my understanding that a ‘Super Complaint’, like the one the Citizens Advice Bureau did when complaining about the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) market, always have to be investigated by the OFT. Another reason I find it interesting is that Bestadvice.net have speculated that this will mean a deprioritisation of the OFTs work in the Secured Loans market, but surely, in this instance, the OFT are talking about their special investigations work as a seperate issue to its standard bread and butter case work.

Apparently with the revised framework, the OFT said it will cut its caseload from 25 to 40 “full” investigations a year to 15 to 20 investigations.

Its difficult to guess what has brought about this decision, maybe it’s the National Audit Office, a genuine lack of resources or perhaps the OFT have lost too many cases and have been forced to focus on the ones where they have a stronger case and, of course, maybe it’s a mixture of all three.