Estate agents' organisations yesterday gave a cautious welcome to a call for a powerful one stop shop to address complaints from consumers.

Ombudsman Stephen Carr-Smith said the industry needed to focus on ensuring more consumers had access to an independent complaints procedure, and he said the current voluntary scheme should become mandatory.

He added that its scope should also be increased to cover complaints relating to letting property, property management, surveys and valuations, and not just buying and selling property as is currently the case.

He wants to see a Residential Property Ombudsman Service set up, which incorporates the current scheme and provides consumers with a one stop shop for all property-related complaints.

Mr Carr-Smith said: "All of us in the property services industry need to focus our attention on making independent redress available to many more consumers.

He said he had repeatedly called on the National Association of Estate Agents and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to make membership of the Ombudsman Estate Agents (OEA) scheme mandatory for their members.

He believed "we are close to a breakthrough".

Mr Carr-Smith said the NAEA was committed to making it mandatory for all their members to join an independent redress scheme by 2006, while RICS had made a similar undertaking but had not yet set a firm deadline.

Harvey Williams, national and West Midlands housing spokesman for the RICS, said if a breakthrough with the OEA was close, that would be "very, very welcome".

He said the RICS already had a complaints and arbitration scheme which was compulsory for its 100,000 UK members.

But he said if the Residential Property Ombudsman Service could be shown to add protection and support for consumers his organisation "would of course welcome it".

Mr Williams said the RICS believes the Government should legislate so that estate agents have to gain a licence to operate in a bid to increase confidence and protect the public.

The Warwick-based NAEA - which represents 10,000 members - also gave guarded support to the "one stop shop".

Mr David Oliver, national compliance officer, said: "In principle it would seem to be a good idea. However I would be concerned if it added bureaucracy."

He said a workable and efficient structure to benefit the public would have to be created for the scheme to gain his full support.

In March last year the Office of Fair Trading published a critical report into estate agents, but it stopped short of setting up a compulsory redress scheme and instead called for better and more widespread self-regulation.

In his annual report the Ombudsman said he received 5,500 complaints in 2004, up slightly on the 5,356 it received the previous year, but down on 2002's level of 6,462.

Of these, just over half were made against estate agents who were members of the scheme.

During the year the Ombudsman reviewed 507 cases. He found in favour of the consumer in 271 cases and in favour of the agent in 143, while settlements were negotiated in 85 cases and eight cases were outside his terms of reference.