Citizens Advice Bureaux help 2.75 million people a year, but many more have benefited from changes to legislation and service delivery that have been secured as a result of our lobbying and campaigns. During 2005/06 we spent £3,282,000 on influencing policymakers and service providers and working with bureaux on local social policy issues.
The Citizens Advice service is the only advice provider that uses comprehensive evidence from clients to inform policy makers and service providers about how their policies impact on people and the improvements which could be made. Citizens Advice receives over 40,000 client reports from bureaux, which, along with the information held in our client case management system builds up a detailed picture of the issues affecting individuals, families and communities. We use this evidence to respond to government consultations to expose inadequate or unfair laws, policies and practices and to make recommendations for improvements.
The Citizens Advice service already makes a major contribution to government policy-making. As the quality and analysis of information we collect about our clients improves, our input will become more relevant and timely for policy makers.
During 2005/06 we said that we would:
- develop a way to show the number of people who have benefited from our national social policy work
- review the perceptions about our social policy work held by external stakeholders and compare this with other agencies.
During this year we have:
- developed and published a practical toolkit for bureaux to help them measure the outcomes of direct policy work
- developed a way to measure the likely impact and benefits of our social policy campaigning work
- commissioned independent research which found that Members of Parliament consistently recognised the Citizens Advice service as one of the most impressive charities at constituency and Westminster level. In addition, 90 per cent of our partners regard themselves as advocates for us
- launched an All Party Parliamentary Group on Citizens Advice to raise awareness in Parliament of the work of the Citizens Advice service
- made a super-complaint to the Office of Fair Trading about exorbitant payment protection insurance (PPI) charges which resulted in a market investigation
- successfully lobbied for limits to the hardship caused by the recovery of tax credit overpayments
- run campaigns to highlight issues such as access to NHS dentists and concerns about cash machine charges, and led other organisations through the Access to Justice Alliance, to campaign on the availabilty of civil legal aid.
Next year we will:
- strengthen the way evidence is gathered including bureaux making more comprehensive uses of our client case management system
- seek a wider range of sources of evidence to make our work with policy makers more effective
- campaign on several key areas including reforms of incapacity benefit. consumer credit legislation, equalities and human rights
- publish a practical way to measure the likely impact and benefits of our social policy campaign work.
We were voted one of the top ten impressive charities by MPs.
We ran campaigns on access to NHS dentists, cash machine charges and access to justice.
We successfully lobbied for limits to the recovery of tax credit overpayments to prevent hardship.
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