The Citizens Advice service helps people resolve their money, legal and other problems by providing free advice and by influencing policymakers. Every Citizens Advice Bureau is a registered charity reliant on trained volunteers and funds to continue providing this vital service to local communities.
The experience of Citizens Advice Bureaux gives them a unique insight into the problems facing UK citizens. We have a key role in speaking up for clients, raising issues brought into bureaux, contributing to public debate and informing legislation.
Citizens Advice collects evidence of CAB clients' problems and uses this to campaign for changes in policies and services. We regularly publish evidence reports and briefings, responses to consultations and parliamentary briefings on a huge range of issues
CAB campaigning - the facts:
- many of our campaigns to influence policies or services take place locally, regionally and nationally
- each year, bureaux submit over 40,000 client evidence forms to our national Citizens Advice office. Information from these forms help us spot trends and collate evidence of policies or services which are not working. Citizens Advice also writes and researches evidence reports, detailed responses to consultations and provides numerous briefings for MPs and Welsh Assembly Members
- our campaign successes such as the abolition of fees for family visitor appeals or our campaign to prevent closure of rural job centres benefit millions of people, many of whom will never have come into contact with a Citizens Advice Bureau
- during 2005/06 our super complaint to the Office of Fair Trading prompted an investiagtion into payment protection insurance costs; we successfully lobbied for limits to the harship cause by tax credit overpayments and ran campaigns on cash machine charges and access to NHS dentists
- volunteer campaigners or social policy co-ordinators in local Citizens Advice Bureaux play a key role in collating evidence and raising the profile of policy concerns locally, regionally and nationally
- bureaux often get clients involved in campaigns by encouraging them to raise issues with their local councillors, MPs or Assembly Members.
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