TL;DR

The Property Ombudsman will not require people bringing complaints to say whether AI wrote them. Lesley Horton’s reasoning is jurisdictional: the codes bind agents, not the public. The same interview confirms the Ombudsman is running AI on its own caseload, as complaint volumes climb more than 50% year on year.

The reasoning

Horton put the boundary plainly. “The Property Ombudsman’s Codes set standards for property agents, not consumers, so we would not seek to require complainants to declare whether they have used AI,” she said, adding: “Nor should legitimate complaints face unnecessary barriers.”

That second clause carries the weight. A disclosure duty would be one more procedural hurdle in front of people who are, by definition, already dissatisfied and often not represented — and it would fall hardest on exactly the complainants for whom a drafting tool levels the field against a professional agency.

Horton also said AI is “not the enemy of progress”, and confirmed the Ombudsman uses it to handle rising volume and complexity, “including those generated with AI assistance”. A redress body processing machine-written complaints with machine assistance is where a good many UK institutions are quietly heading.

The cost lands somewhere

Declining to police the input does not make the problem disappear. Horton described submissions “where relevant evidence is harder to identify among inaccurate, repetitive or unnecessary material”, which she said takes longer and adds pressure on resources and costs. Resultsense reported on Wednesday that letting agents were fielding AI-drafted tenant complaints citing law that does not apply. The Ombudsman is now describing the same pattern one level up the chain.

So the burden shifts rather than vanishing — onto agents, who Horton says must keep clear and accurate records, since good records let an issue be resolved efficiently whatever drafted the complaint.

Why it matters beyond property

Every UK redress scheme, regulator and internal complaints team faces this decision, and most have not made it publicly. Horton has set out a position others can borrow: regulate the party you have jurisdiction over, absorb the extra effort, and put the compliance weight on record-keeping instead of on disclosure.

Looking forward

Watch whether the Financial Ombudsman Service and comparable bodies land the same way. Watch too whether “keep clean records” holds up if volumes rise another 50%, because that answer works only while the caseload stays reviewable by people.