1. Executive Summary
2. Citizens Advice is the national co-ordinating body for Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABx) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. CABx deal with nearly 6 million problems raised by the people who contact them each year from over 2,000 outlets including GPs' surgeries, Magistrates and County Courts, and community centres. There are over 200 CABx working in Local Authority areas in England that were considered as ‘accessible rural’ or ‘remote rural’ by the Countryside Agency.
3. The key issues we would like to draw to the Committee's attention are:
- The ability of voluntary and community groups to be effectively represented and engaged at the regional level. Most voluntary organisations have limited resources and will find it difficult to effectively engage at the regional level. This can leave representation of the voluntary sector to a small minority of groups who may have particular vested interests.
- The need to ensure that streamlining does not result in less funding. The plethora of funding streams has arisen out of a need, and the need does not diminish if the number of funding streams are reduced. It is important that the combined resources of the funding streams are still available.
- The need to actively target resources for work with ‘socially excluded’ people in rural areas. There is concern about a lack of accountability of RDAs and even Government Offices in the Regions when setting and tackling regional priorities. It is crucial that a mechanism is found to ensure resources are used to help those most in need and service deliverers are held accountable against this.
- The need to enforce effective rural proofing across Government. Rural proofing encourages organisations to take into account the impact of their services in rural areas. However, we believe we should be looking to expand services, rather than just limiting reductions. We are concerned that other Government departments do not undertake rural-proofing adequately when planning changes to the services they offer. This leads to less accessible advice, court closures and fewer Jobcentre Plus outlets.
4. Introduction
4.1 Citizens Advice is the national co-ordinating body for Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABx) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. CABx deal with nearly 6 million problems raised by the people who contact them each year from over 2,000 outlets including GPs' surgeries, magistrates and county courts, and community centres.
4.2 Each Citizens Advice Bureau is a charity, run by paid staff and volunteers. Bureaux belong to Citizens Advice, the organisation that sets standards for advice and equal opportunities and supports bureaux with a comprehensive information system, training and other services. Citizens Advice also co-ordinates social policy, media, publicity and parliamentary work.
4.3 All Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABx) are working to tailor services to meet the needs of the communities they serve. These include Tynedale CAB who have outreaches in GPs’ clinics across the districts and Boothferry CAB who are piloting a video links project. Other ways of enhancing the opportunity to access free, independent, impartial and confidential advice include telephone advice which is being delivered across Lincolnshire, e-mail advice which is delivered by Rutland CAB, or mobile services as undertaken by Crewe and Nantwich CAB. Many CABx run outreaches like the one stop shop in Waters Upton. Other CABx provide home-visiting services, including Calderdale. All of these services seek to guarantee that individuals within rural communities have increased opportunity to obtain professional advice from their CAB.
4.4 Since May 2002, Citizens Advice has focussed time and resources on rural issues:
- We have commented on the Rural White Paper Review and the Modernising Rural Delivery Review.
- We have met with DEFRA to discuss issues relating to tackling social exclusion in rural areas, the need for capacity building within rural voluntary organisations, and the concerns of using one methodology to do this.
- DEFRA have had access to our collection of evidence on access to transport, access to services, and other rural problems reported by our clients.
- We are on the Working Group of the Rural Stress Action Plan which aims to influence policy and gives grants to small rural voluntary organisations working to alleviate distress in rural areas.
- We have worked together with Transport 2000 and the Countryside Agency on access to public transport in rural areas, and we have increasingly raised rural aspects to policy issues in our evidence reports.
- In the Partnership Accord signed by the Citizens Advice service and on behalf of Government by DTI, the Citizens Advice Service and DEFRA have agreed jointly to work toward meeting the DEFRA PSA target on productivity and access to services.
5. The ability of the wider voluntary and community sector to be effectively represented at the regional level
5.1 One of the roles of Government at all levels is to provide relevant information and consult individual stakeholders. The problems voluntary sector organisations such as Citizens Advice Bureaux face is that with limited capacity it is difficult to find the time to effectively engage with Government at a regional level. This can leave representation of the voluntary sector to a small minority of groups who may have particular vested interests. Many of these groups do not represent the needs of the socially excluded.
5.2 In theory, this could be solved by better resourcing of voluntary organisations to provide effective representation at regional level. However, we appreciate that this would be too expensive to fund. Therefore the Government’s regional bodies and agencies must have an over-riding duty to take into account the needs of the socially excluded in their decision making.
6. The need to ensure that streamlining does not result in less funding for the voluntary and community sector
6.1 Citizens Advice is concerned that the reduction of funding streams should not lead to a reduction in funding available. For example, the Rural Stress Action Plan, which is a DEFRA programme to alleviate distress in rural areas, funds 10 – 15 projects a year. All are small scale and the funding is unlikely to be in excess of £8,000. Whilst the administration costs are comparatively high, these groups are unlikely to access funding elsewhere for their work at this initial stage. However many of these programmes have been able to demonstrate their value to other funders based on the initial six-nine month period of their DEFRA funding.
6.2 When funding rural projects, DEFRA should take the lead by ensuring that the additional cost of delivering a service in rural area where population widely dispersed over large geographical area are met. An allowance for travel costs and time by organisations funding service delivery would make a huge difference to the service rural communities can presently access. This is crucial when the future funding for rural voluntary sector projects will be compared with that for similar urban projects.
7. The need to actively target work with people who are termed social excluded in rural areas
7.1 Many CAB clients are on low incomes and suffer the consequences of social and financial exclusion. A July 2003 survey by MORI for Citizens Advice about financial overcommitment found that 42% of social groups D & E were likely to seek advice about money problems from a CAB, compared to 25% of social groups A & B.[1] It is CAB experience that socially excluded people living in rural areas can experience particularly acute problems of social isolation. Here are a few examples of cases reported by CABx situated in rural areas:
A CAB in Cornwall reported that a woman with severe mental and physical health problems living in a rural area asked the Jobcentre for help to complete the Incapacity for Work questionnaire that she had been sent. The Jobcentre refused to help her and told her to go to the CAB. The client came to the bureau on a day when the CAB was not open to the public. She had to return the following day, thus making her late returning the form to the Jobcentre. The client had no transport of her own and could only get to the CAB by begging a lift.
A CAB in Lincolnshire was contacted by a health visitor about a homeless couple with three children under the age of three who had been rehoused in a small village on Christmas Eve. The health visitor was concerned that they had no money, washing and cooking facilities or furniture. The mother was being treated for depression. The father had to walk six miles to nearest town to get baby milk because they had no transport. The baby had to be admitted to hospital. The health visitor had been unable to get someone from Social Services to help as they insisted that it was nothing to do with them. The CAB were able to help the family apply successfully for a social fund loan to sort out their immediate problems.
7.2 We consider that we are particularly well placed to help tackle rural social exclusion and the advice we give can have large implications for the client, community and economy. Many of our users tend to be those on low incomes experiencing problems with their benefits, housing, employment and debts. The advice CABx give not only benefits clients, maximising their income but also leads to improved health[2] resulting in reduced numbers of GP consultations[3].
7.3 There are a number of beneficiaries of benefit take up work. The increased income into low income households not only improves quality of life of clients but it has a significant impact on the local economy. Work by the New Economics Foundation showed that the increased money individuals gained as a result of benefit take up work was most likely to be spent in the local economy[4]. Work by Strathclyde University suggested that benefit take up work was more efficient at creating jobs than regeneration schemes aimed at job creation[5] and housing advice can lead to fewer individuals being evicted. This not only provides an amicable solution for many clients, but also saves considerable costs which the local authority would incur when having to house homeless individuals. Local authorities also benefit from advice given to individuals through increased income from central Government. This is because advice can lead to more successful benefit take up which is a factor in determining local authority grants through the Standard Spending Assessment. Whilst advice given by CABx to their clients is tailored to ensure clients can make an informed choice, the effects of the advice are felt in the local community and economy.
7.4 Citizens Advice has concerns whether RDAs can effectively target resources on meeting the needs of socially excluded individuals in rural areas. The principle of devolving decision making to the regions is to give local people a greater say in the decisions that are made. It is important that their input is taken into account at the regional level. RDAs must be made accountable for the decisions they make. This accountability should be to the local level, rather than just to Central Government. The RDAs should report on how the funds given to them by Defra have been spent on delivery in rural areas and how they have effectively targeted the resources at the socially excluded.
7.5 The RDAs have no track record on successfully delivering social programmes. RDAs should be asked to demonstrate how they take into account the social impacts, rather than the purely economic outputs of all their programmes. Only when they have demonstrated their ability to take social outcomes into account in the wider economic based programmes, should they be allowed to become involved in the delivery of social programmes.
8. Rural-proofing public services
8.1 Citizens Advice warmly welcomes the work undertaken by DEFRA and the Countryside Agency to develop a rural-proofing checklist for both central and local government to use to ensure that their services meet the needs of those living in rural areas. However we are concerned to note that other government departments do not undertake rural-proofing adequately when planning changes to the services they offer. For example:
8.2 Advice services
8.2.1 The government’s 1999 Access to Justice Act targeted the availability of legal aid and established the Community Legal Service (CLS) – a loose structure for the planning and co-ordination of publicly funded legal services via the Legal Services Commission (LSC). A substantial part of CAB funding for advice services now comes from the LSC to provide specialist advice services for those people who are eligible for legal aid.
8.2.2 In January 2004, Citizens Advice published a report on access to publicly funded advice.[6] We concluded that there were growing “advice deserts”, with increased clustering of services in urban areas and a decline in the number of solicitors firms providing publicly funded legal services. Our report suggests that these problems are particularly acute in rural areas. For example:
A CAB in Dorset reported that there are only two solicitor's firms in Purbeck providing publicly funded legal advice in family issues. Any other type of publicly funded help has to be sought in Poole or Bournemouth, a minimum of 10 miles traveling distance. Nobody offers any help with criminal cases. They have also had difficulty getting women emergency help with injunctions late in the day or Fridays.
A CAB in Cambridgeshire reported that in the Wisbech area there was no publicly funded legal advice in areas other than debt and welfare benefits (provided by the CAB) family and crime. For example, the nearest provider of immigration advice is in Peterborough, 25 miles away. Even for family issues, the three publicly funded solicitors are often fully booked, so clients who urgently need legal advice about getting an injunction against their partner may have to travel to Peterborough. Travel to Peterborough is time-consuming and very costly for people on low incomes.
8.2.3 The LSC provides their regional offices with the discretion to decide as to whether or not they will include an allowance for travel costs and travel time in their contracts. We are only aware of a few rural CABx who have been able to negotiate the inclusion of travel costs and time in their contract for the delivery of a peripatetic service.
8.2.4 In rural areas there are increased costs associated with travelling to meet clients. The time spent travelling to meet clients reduces the time that can be spent with other clients resulting in a smaller number of clients being advised. Because there is no allowance for travel costs and time in contracts, service deliverers in rural areas are unable to meet the requirement of their contract and may be financially penalised as a result. As a consequence some service deliverers are choosing not to renew their LSC contracts, reducing the advice available to rural communities.
8.2.5 A further problem is that LSC funding for advice does not cover advice for business debts. As many individuals in rural areas may be self – employed or sole traders, their personal debts may be interlinked with their business debts. Although the client’s personal debts can be dealt with under the LSC franchise, it may be difficult to deal with the client’s personal debts in isolation from their business debts. In particular the business debts may be much more complex and time-consuming to deal with than the personal debts.
8.3 Jobcentre Plus and Pensions Service
8.3.1 As a consequence of the reorganisation of Benefits Agency and Employment Service Offices into Jobcentre Plus and the Pensions Service, many social security offices and Jobcentres will be closed. There is a phased roll-out of the new arrangements by a geographical basis. This will be completed by 2006. Further offices will close as a result of the DWP’s efficiency programme.[7]
8.3.2 Several bureaux situated in largely rural areas are concerned that Jobcentre Plus do not appear to have taken into account the rurality of the area when deciding which offices should be closed. For example:
The CAB successfully campaigned for the retention of four Jobcentre offices in the New Forest area. Jobcentre Plus had originally planned to close all but one of these. The CAB was concerned that closing local offices would actually make it harder for people to access the service, in an area where people already faced problems getting to use the services of the Jobcentres due to the distances and cost of travel. The CAB felt that the proposals displayed a fundamental lack of understanding of the problems faced by people on unemployment and other welfare benefits, particularly in rural areas. The closing of local Job Centres would not benefit the majority of claimants, who would be less able to access the services and would discriminate against the most disadvantaged people, causing them increased hardship and further social exclusion. People who were claiming benefits might be forced to spend a large proportion of their weekly income on travelling to facilitate their claims, and this would not help lift them out of poverty.
8.3.3 Where services have already been reorganised, it appears that Jobcentre Plus may not have taken into account of the availability of public transport to their offices situated in largely rural areas:
A CAB in Dorset recently reported two cases where the reorganisation of local benefits offices caused problems for people who needed to travel to benefits offices for interviews. A heavily pregnant woman was told that she would have to travel to Shaftesbury Jobcentre Plus office 15 miles away from her home, for an interview to claim maternity allowance. The CAB was concerned that there is a very poor public transport service to this town, but there was a much better bus service to Yeovil, where the client could have previously gone for an interview with Jobcentre Plus. Another woman whose partner had just left her attended the Yeovil Jobcentre Plus office to her home to claim income support and was told to go to Shaftesbury for an interview. When the CAB contacted the New Deal Lone Parent adviser at Yeovil to find out why local residents could no longer be dealt with at Yeovil, they were told that the new Dorset Jobcentre Plus contact centre at Poole had no computer links with the Jobcentre Plus office at Yeovil in Somerset. Luckily the CAB was able to persuade the Yeovil office to interview their client.
8.4 The Court Service
8.4.1 Citizens Advice is concerned that access to justice for people in rural areas is being made difficult because of closures of small magistrates and county courts serving largely rural areas. CAB advisers point to the importance of personal attendance at court hearings, and the added stress, to what for many will already be a traumatic experience, for their clients of having to travel long distances, sometimes to large cities to which they would never normally travel. In some cases, such journeys are simply not practical in any case, either because public transport does not enable a client to attend at the time a case is listed, or because the expense involved in the journey is too great. For example:
A CAB in Shropshire reported that a lone parent on income support had received a summons to attend court for a review of her financial circumstances, but had been unable to attend as she felt it was impossible to get there. It would be an 80-mile round trip involving two buses, or getting a taxi, which would cost £44 in total, a third of her weekly income. The bureau commented that poor provision of public transport and the closure of local courts make it difficult for people on low incomes who live in rural areas to travel to court.
8.4.2 Although the Court Service is currently reviewing the network of county courts as part of its project of modernisation, it is not clear to what extent rural access to justice will be taken into account when deciding on closure of courts.
9. The limitations of local community plans used to determine issues and priorities for resource allocation
9.1 Community plans are used to identify issues of concern and therefore they must be inclusive and built on a robust evidence base. In our experience, this does not always happen. Often the plan is drawn up by an individual or organisation with particular interests or without the necessary overview. Unfortunately as a consequence access to free advice is either not an important issue, or one which they have not thought about. When the community is consulted, it is often by way of questionnaires with tick lists for the community to indicate which services it would like provided. The options often exclude access to advice and information. When advice and information are offered as an option it is often without consultation with the relevant agencies, thereby not ensuring that the advice services have the capacity to deliver an additional demand.
9.2 This can have serious implications:
- Firstly CABx cannot prove the need for their service or for their service to expand and therefore lose out on valuable funding opportunities. This can result in a reduced service so socially excluded individuals who use the CAB find that it is no longer there for them when they need it most.
Secondly a community may be given the false expectation that the CAB will provide a service in the locality.
9.3 For example:
Mid Suffolk CAB reported that the Town Council in Needham decided to undertake a market towns health check. The individual undertaking the project consulted the CAB by chance, but by then it was too late for the CAB’s comments to be incorporated into the questionnaire. The individual was extremely helpful but unfortunately originally had little knowledge about the CAB. As a consequence when the consultation took place, individuals within in the community were not asked to comment on topics such as legal advice.
East Dorset CAB reported that when the council undertook a community consultation the CAB was listed as an option for individuals to choose. Unfortunately the questionnaires did not tend to be completed by many of the individuals who are more likely to be social excluded and who use the CAB service.
A CAB reported that they had read in a local paper that a local village was intending to offer services including CAB from the community centre. However, the CAB had not been asked if they were able to deliver the services and this was the first they had heard of it.
9.4 Citizens Advice considers that if community plans are to be used as a means of identifying issues and allocating resources, the communities must be presented with a full range of options, including advice and support services provided by voluntary and community groups. These groups must be consulted to ensure they have the capacity to increase their service provision. It should be made clear to the community that some services could cease to exist if the community fails to highlight their importance.
10. The potential problems associated with tight timescale for implementing changes
10.1 After two years of consideration, DEFRA’s rural strategy has been published. It will be December before many of the intricacies have been decided. This leaves three months in which to plan the new programmes which is too short a timescale. A comparison could be made when the government abolished Community Health Councils, which dealt with complaints about NHS services, in 2002. They did not leave sufficient time to develop the alternative and as a consequence, Citizens Advice was asked to run the Independent Complaints and Advice Service (ICAS) as a short-term measure.
Social Policy contact: Sue Edwards social.policy@citizensadvice.org.uk
Gerard Crofton-Martin, Rural Development Officer: gerard.crofton-martin@citizensadvice.org.uk
[1] Financial Overcommitment, MORI, July 2003
[2] Lisham-Peat, J. and Brown, G., 2002, Welfare benefits take up project in primary care Wakefield, Benefits, No 33, Vol 10, pp 45-48, Issue 1, Policy Press, Bristol
[3] Abbot, S. and Davidson, L., 2000, Easing the burden on primary care in deprived urban areas: a service model, Primary Health Care Research and Development, London, Arnold Publishers, pp 201-206
[4] New Economics Foundation, 2002, The Money Trail, measuring your impact on the local economy using LM3. London
[5] The Fraser Allender Institute, 2001, The impact of welfare spending on the Glasgow Economy, Glasgow: University of Strathclyde.
[6] The Geography of Advice – an overview of the challenges facing the Community Legal Service
[7] See the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions’ statement to the House of Commons on 16 September 2004 (Hansard 16.9.04 Column 179WS)
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