The Citizens Advice service helps people resolve their legal, money and other problems by providing free, independent and confidential advice, and by influencing policymakers.
Every Citizens Advice Bureau is a registered charity reliant on trained volunteers and funds to provide these vital services for local communities.
Influencing policy and decision-makers is at the heart of the Citizens Advice service. The evidence we gain by helping people locally to resolve individual problems is used to inform our work with policymakers, regulators, Members of Parliament and Members of the National Assembly for Wales (see below Our work in Parliament).
Every year, Citizens Advice receives over 42,000 detailed reports from Citizens Advice Bureaux on client problems caused by bad or unfair laws, policies and practices. This gives us extremely rich qualitative data in every area that adversely affects our clients with which to inform policy debate.
The Citizens Advice service has provided free, independent and confidential information, advice and support to the public for 70 years. Born out of the adversity of the Second World War we are still in great demand today, particularly as a result of the recession, which has had a devastating impact on so many people.
While some see ‘green shoots’, consumer confidence in the economy and financial services remains low and there is growing uncertainty and fears for the future. Citizens Advice wants to ensure that no one is left behind when the economy recovers.
We want to ensure that the people who are struggling today have something better to look forward to tomorrow. That is why we have produced this manifesto – to use their experiences to secure a blueprint for a better, and more hopeful, future.
We use evidence from the problems faced by CAB clients to produce a range of reports and briefings and aslo support bureaux to campaign locally on social policy issues.
We brief Members of Parliament and Members of the National Assembly for Wales on the key issues affecting the Citizens Advice service and our clients.
As well as regularly meeting with Parliamentarians to brief them on key bills, we also contribute evidence to Select Committee inquiries, organise two All Party Parliamentary Groups, support Citizens Advice Bureaux and MPs working together effectively at a constituency level, and manage an extensive CAB presence at the party political conferences.
See also our special briefing for Charlotte Atkins MP’s Westminster Hall debate, 2 December 2009:
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