Thanks to your help, we have changed things
Public and private services, public policy, law and practice should work as well for citizens and consumers as it does for providers and businesses.
But millions of people who turn to the Citizens Advice service for help every year are giving us first hand evidence to show how services, law and practice need to improve. We use this evidence in our social policy work to get lasting changes which benefit many millions of citizens and consumers every year.
So what difference has our policy work made? This report summarises the social policy work led by Citizens Advice in the last year. For each policy area it lists what we aimed to achieve, the activities we undertook and the results, so far. However, it doesn’t cover the many changes achieved locally by bureaux.
The policy areas we have covered range from getting improvements in the delivery of tax credits to getting improvements in the product features of basic bank accounts offered by major high street banks.
Working with government, companies, trade associations and consumer groups our policy work has secured many changes including:
- Six million households are getting clearer information about their tax credit awards now because of Citizens Advice.
- Consumer protection legislation relating to scams and accommodation agencies was safeguarded due to our lobbying.
- 150,000 customers will no longer face unexpected debts after British Gas changed its policy on applying new tariffs to users of token meters.
- Utility regulators will have powers to set performance standards for fuel and gas suppliers potentially benefiting all consumers of these essential services.
- 500,000 bank account holders will benefit from Barclays introducing a buffer zone on its basic bank account, reducing the risk of bank charges for missed direct debits.
- Independent regulation of bailiffs seems more probable now due to our high profile campaign which 134 Citizens Advice Bureaux joined.
- 2.4 million people could benefit from 600 new free-of-charge cash machines, as a result of our ATMWatch campaign.
- The government is now actively investigating how to protect workers who are most vulnerable to exploitation.
- Our super-complaint about payment protection insurance (PPI) prompted a wave of regulatory action by the Financial Services Authority who introduced fines and tighter standards to prevent mis-selling PPI.
To make more changes like this happen we don’t just need evidence from Citizens Advice Bureaux. We need excellent advocacy by everyone in the CAB service, participation in our national campaigns, and a shared commitment to use the evidence locally and nationally to ensure problems are solved more widely.
We hope this report will help people in the CAB service to see how this is achieved and that our policy work really does make a difference.
Teresa Perchard
Citizens Advice Director of Policy
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