After an intervention from the Ombudsman, a long-term prison inmate finally received an answer to his application to be allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court after a decade of delay.

An investigation by the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) has resulted in London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham repaying a significant sum of money to 58 elderly tenants who had been overpaying for water in their homes.

In September 2013 the Forum of Pakistan Ombudsman held a Workshop on the Challenges of Ombudsmanship. One month later, a special report regarding the activities during those two days was released.

The Catalan Ombudsman, in collaboration with the International Association of Language Commissioners (IALC) has organized an international Symposium on Language Rights and social cohesion in multilingual societies, which will take place next March in Barcelona.

According to Ontario’s “sunshine law”, all meetings of councils, local boards and their committees must be open to the public unless they meet certain narrow requirements. However, there is no punishment for violating the law and municipalities are allowed to hire their own investigators.

The African Ombudsman Summit will be held from 25 to 26 February 2014 in Johannesburg and is being hosted by the African Ombudsman Research Centre (AORC), on behalf of the African Ombudsman and Mediators’ Association (AOMA). The Summit’s theme is “Strengthening Good Governance in Africa through the Role of the Ombudsman”.

Government House Bermuda has announced the appointment of Ms Victoria Pearman as the next Ombudsman. Ms Pearman will succeed Ms Arlene Brock, whose term of office will finish on 31 January 2014.

The Board of Directors decided that the Banking Mohtasib qualified for Voting membership set out in Article 6 (2) of the IOI By-laws and therefore accepted the Banking Mohtasib as Voting member of the IOI.