Festival refunds are not guaranteed so know your rights, warns the Financial Ombudsman Service
4 June 2026
As festival season gets going, many consumers may not understand their rights to getting their money back if things go wrong.
Earlier this year our non-executive board commissioned an independent review of our service to look at where we might be able to do things better.
A respected consumer rights champion, Richard Lloyd, was asked to carry out the review. In the months since his appointment, he has spent time talking to our people, our customers and our stakeholders, and he has shared his findings and recommendations with our service in a report (PDF 559KB).
Chief ombudsman and chief executive Caroline Wayman has welcomed the report, saying:
We’re grateful to Richard Lloyd for conducting such a thorough review. We’ll be considering carefully what it means for our service, keen to learn from the past so we can do things even better in the future. We will publish an update on our progress by the end of the year.
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