Citizens Advice: Supporting Communities and Navigating Consumer Issues

Release Date: 30/09/24

Host(s):

• Adam
• Louise (LouBax)

Guests:

• Jon Walters – Senior Service and Contract Manager, Citizens Advice
• Judith Wood Archer – Senior Delivery Director, Society Matters Citizens Advice Gateshead

Episode Summary:

In this episode, Adam and Louise are joined by Jon Walters and Judith Wood Archer from Citizens Advice. The discussion revolves around the incredible work Citizens Advice does to support communities across the UK, handling over 5.5 million consumer-related issues in 2022. From helping consumers navigate energy issues and debt advice to ensuring individuals understand their rights, Citizens Advice plays a vital role in consumer protection.

Judith shares insights from her 18 years of experience at Citizens Advice Gateshead, the largest branch in the country, while Jon discusses how the national team works to advocate for consumer rights and influence government policies. Together, they explore how the cost-of-living crisis has impacted consumers and the importance of offering practical, accessible support when people need it most.

Key Takeaways:

1. Citizens Advice’s Reach: In 2022, the Citizens Advice Consumer Service handled over 5.5 million consumer issues, and their website received 29 million visits, focusing on consumer rights, energy issues, and debt advice.
2. Cost of Living Crisis: Citizens Advice has seen a significant increase in demand for services, with many clients struggling due to rising living costs and debt.
3. Importance of Early Intervention: Judith and John emphasize the need for people to seek help early to prevent small issues from escalating into crises.
4. Citizens Advice’s Impact: The organization delivers services both locally and nationally, offering vital advice and support in areas like housing, benefits, and consumer protection.

Notable Quotes:

1. Jon Walters: "We try to give people the help and advice they need, but part of our job is to be the people's champion, influencing decision-makers to see things from the perspective of those in need."
2. Judith Wood Archer: "It's often not until people are in crisis that they seek help. But if we can catch them early, it's like untying a simple bow instead of cutting through a knot."
3. Adam Carter: "Citizens Advice is like a safety net – people don’t think they need it until a problem happens."

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Transcript

[00:00:09] Adam: Hello everyone. And welcome to the Consumer Friend podcast. In today's episode, we are going to be talking to two people from Citizens Advice and finding out how they and their teams deliver some of the huge amount of work that is within their remit. But before we do that, here she is, fresh from her TV debut on this morning, causing ripples across the consumer protection landscape.[00:00:30] 

[00:00:30] Adam: It's little Lou Bax. Hi Lou. How are you? 

[00:00:33] Louise: I'm good. Thanks, Ads. How are you? 

[00:00:36] Adam: Great. You are. You're fantastic on telly. Well done, Luke. Can you do a little talk about it? What 

[00:00:42] Louise: actually happened? Did you like the way that like my little legs had to tuck underneath the chair just to keep myself from swinging, my little legs swinging on the chair.

[00:00:49] Louise: That was very good. So I got invited on to this morning with Dermot and Alison. Who are as nice as they seem, which was really good. They're lovely people. They make you feel really [00:01:00] welcome to talk about, um, telephone scams and fake. White goods protection plans. 

[00:01:06] Adam: So you do that was good. Yeah, you were doing that on as the manager of the National Trading Standards scams team 

[00:01:12] Louise: I was head of the scams team.

[00:01:14] Louise: Sorry 

[00:01:14] Adam: if I demoted you there a little bit. 

[00:01:15] Louise: You did, you did demote me, fine. It's a regular, it's Monday, it's allowed. I'll go, I'll go back up by Friday. Um, It was, um, yeah, so it was really good. And actually we got about 10 minutes airtime to talk about it, to try and help people protect their [00:01:30] relatives and actually get the messages across.

[00:01:31] Louise: It was great. It was really good fun. It was really nice. And they've invited me back. So I did something right. 

[00:01:35] Adam: Yeah. Well done. And you're back on telly on, on this Wednesday, but I suppose we we're, we're, we're recording this way before this goes out. So it's not going to make any difference to people just go back and search for Louise Baxter on ITV this morning and she'll be there somewhere on YouTube.

[00:01:50] Louise: Right. So the whole thing, so actually I've watched, I don't like to overwatch myself because I get overly critical, but this was Adam's one take of my comment. You actually looked all right. [00:02:00] And I was like, what do you mean? I was like, that's charming. It's amazing what can happen 

[00:02:05] Adam: when you have like professional makeup and professional hair being done, isn't it?

[00:02:09] Adam: I'm taking the piss. You're gorgeous, Lou, all the time. 

[00:02:12] Louise: Thanks Adam. 

[00:02:15] Adam: See you. Lou, today we are talking to two people from Citizens Advice. Do you want to just give me a little take on, on, on Citizens Advice, on your, on your thoughts of being a trading standards professional for the last 25 years or whatever it's been?

[00:02:27] Louise: We've worked with Citizens Advice, so I know I've worked [00:02:30] with Citizens Advice in lots of different, um, situations across the years, and actually they're, um, um, That's like the local hubs, aren't they? to provide support to consumers. They're consumer champions at every local level and national. 

[00:02:41] Adam: Yeah. And we're going to find out a bit more now.

[00:02:43] Adam: So I've got, I've got some stats, obvs, 

[00:02:47] Louise: got some 

[00:02:47] Adam: stats. So in 2022, Citizens Advice Consumer Service handled over 5, 550, 000 consumer related issues providing assistance via phone, email, and web chat. The citizens [00:03:00] advice website, which provides consumer advice, had over 29 million visits in 2022, with the most access page being those related to consumer rights, energy issues, and debt advice.

[00:03:10] Adam: I guess we're Louise, we're in kind of direct competition with citizens advice, aren't we? I 

[00:03:15] Louise: don't know whether it's competition because we're all doing it for free. So we're all doing the 

[00:03:19] Adam: right thing. 

[00:03:21] Louise: I like collaboration rather than competition. Okay, fine. I'm 

[00:03:24] Adam: going to, I'm going to, I'm trying to create a bit of friction, you know, try and create a bit of, uh, a bit of, a bit of rivalry.

[00:03:29] Adam: [00:03:30] Drama, 

[00:03:30] Louise: drama, and some dramatic music at the beginning. 

[00:03:34] Adam: The two wonderful people we have today, John Walters has been with Citizens Advice for over 10 years and is now the Senior Service and Contract Manager. Hi John, thank you so much for coming on today and talking about the valuable work that you do.

[00:03:46] Adam: Good morning, both. How are we doing? Good, thank you. And also with us, the Senior Delivery Director at Society Matters, Citizens Advice, Gait Head. A big warm welcome to Judith Wood Archer. Hi, Judith. Thank you for [00:04:00] coming on to the Consumer Friend Podcast. How are you doing? 

[00:04:02] Judith: Hello, good morning. Um, really lovely to be here.

[00:04:04] Judith: I'm doing really well. It's Monday morning. The sun is nearly shining here in Gateshead. 

[00:04:10] Adam: Good, good. It's quite, it's quite high up on the country, isn't it, Gateshead? That's, we're talking Newcastle way, aren't we? 

[00:04:16] Judith: We are, but not quite. We are across the river from Newcastle, and that river makes a big difference.

[00:04:22] Adam: Take your word for it. Uh, so, um, John, do you want to just introduce yourself, talk a bit about yourself, uh, how long you've been doing it, doing what you're [00:04:30] doing and, and the kind of stuff that the Citizens Advice do. So you're, you're kind of the national team, aren't you? You're part of the national team.

[00:04:37] Jon: Yeah, it's probably worth, thank you, Adam. It's probably worth explaining a little bit about the structure of Citizens Advice in the sense that we have like a national overarching charity. And then as Lou talked about earlier, I think sort of about 260 local offices spread across England and Wales that deliver help within the communities across.

[00:04:53] Jon: Somewhere around one and a half thousand kind of advice outlets. So one local office will deliver advice from multiple places and [00:05:00] Judith's much more qualified to talk about that than I am. So we'll let her do that in a moment. But I think, you know, National Citizens Advice has kind of got two mission statements, I suppose you'd call them.

[00:05:09] Jon: We like to try and help people find a way forward, whatever their issue is. So, you know, when they come to us and often people come to us with overlapping issues and more than one issues, our job is to try and give them the help and advice they need, maybe do some of that work for them in some circumstances or connect them to the right places.

[00:05:26] Jon: But also some of our work is kind of being like the people's champion effectively in terms of [00:05:30] advocacy. So influencing government, influence decision makers to try and see things the way that our clients need them to be seen, if that makes sense. And so my role is overseeing a couple of our national funded services and one of those is the consumer services which I've actually been involved in around for about 20 years actually, 10 of which is Citizens Advice.

[00:05:46] Jon: And to your point about competition, Adam, I would say that the partnership between Trading Standards and Citizens Advice has always been pretty good, pretty healthy. We got on really well. We know our job is to advise clients, but part of the work we do at Citizens Advice Consumer Service is [00:06:00] all the data and intelligence we collected shared across the trading standards and consumer protection landscapes.

[00:06:04] Jon: And that intelligence really helps trading standards do what they do so well, which is kind of, you know, protect the public either through business education, proactive enforcement. All those kind of things. So we really know that the onus is on us to do our job well at the front end to ensure the trading standards can do their job right at the back end.

[00:06:19] Jon: I think, 

[00:06:20] Adam: I think that's a really important point, isn't it? Because there is no, there is now no way to directly refer into a trading standards team within a local authority or, or there [00:06:30] might be, but it's kind of sporadic across the country. So the best way to get information now to trading standards is by phoning Citizens Advice.

[00:06:38] Jon: Yeah. And one of the, um, when you were talking about the web stats earlier, one of the main pages that is always the most popular on our website is report to trading standards. So people that want to get advice, but some people want to just tell trading standards about a particular issue they've seen. So a breach of consumer legislation, a poor experience, something like that.

[00:06:53] Jon: Our advisors are able to pass that to trading standards as well as give advice in particular circumstances. So yeah, I 

[00:06:58] Louise: have that this week [00:07:00] ads that John's dad messaged me and asked me about how he, what he wanted to report an unsafe item. Okay. Thank you. And get into trading standards. And I have to say to him, you can't go direct.

[00:07:09] Louise: You have to go by it. When you say John's 

[00:07:11] Adam: dad, you don't mean John Waters, who is with us now on the podcast, who would hopefully know how to do that. 

[00:07:18] Louise: No, no, I don't mean that, that, that John, no. 

[00:07:23] Adam: Um, I think. I've, I've, I have, I've had many conversations about this where trading standards, I feel has [00:07:30] almost become not necessarily unknown, but have kind of hidden into the background.

[00:07:33] Adam: And that's probably happened since 2012 when consumers start, started reporting into Citizens Advice rather than Trading Standards Direct. What, what, what do you think about that? Do you think that's kind of, that's kind of a fair comment? 

[00:07:46] Jon: Uh, well, I mean, I suppose the model as it is, has been around since 2005, really, because before consumer service was with citizens advice, there was a precursor called it called consumer direct.

[00:07:55] Jon: And I think the basic principles behind that at the time were to kind of centralise that [00:08:00] first tier advice, because there was an inconsistent delivery model across local authority level, and it made it difficult for trading standards and advice wasn't necessarily a kind of statutory function for, uh, trading standards.

[00:08:12] Jon: What I think is that hopefully, the idea behind it was to free some of the, when I say burden, I mean that the time that's spent on advising clients is now set with us as the advice kind of organization. And the time that you can be spent by Trading Standards now can be 100 percent on kind of enforcement and protection [00:08:30] activity.

[00:08:30] Jon: I would agree with your statement, although, as I say, from the website, if you look at people wanting to talk to Trading Standards, they're not going to be able to do that. And recognizing that term still, it being one of the big, big terms on our website. I don't think that the resonance of it has gone away entirely.

[00:08:43] Jon: I think trading standards and consumer protection more broadly, it's a bit like insurance. You don't know you're going to need it until you come up with a problem for you. And then it's like, who do I talk to? It must be trading standards. What is the route to do that kind of thing? 

[00:08:54] Adam: Yeah. It's hard to make it interesting and relevant until it becomes.

[00:08:57] Adam: relevant. 

[00:08:59] Louise: It's also the [00:09:00] capacity, isn't it? Like you're not going to learn that the legislation in relation to consumer protection is ridiculously complicated and you're not gonna, people have not got the capacity, like we said, to learn something like that when they don't need it. And even when they do need it, you've got that situational vulnerability and that additional stress because they've got a problem.

[00:09:17] Louise: They can't, they have, people don't have the capacity to learn 17 different bits of legislation and try and understand what their legal rights are. Ah, that's not, that's not how it works. So that's why you push it to trading standards. But as I used to do the advice job, I used to love being an [00:09:30] advisor, but from that perspective as well, even then, when we have more resources and we went out into the general public a lot more, people still don't really know what trading standards does, like you say.

[00:09:39] Louise: They just want, they just need it to be relevant at a particular time, but people don't actually care who helps them solve a problem, as long as somebody helps them solve a problem. 

[00:09:48] Jon: Yeah, I mean, I started as well, Lou, 20 years ago, and I really enjoyed that as well, actually. We're 

[00:09:53] Louise: old now, John. That's what you're saying.

[00:09:54] Louise: What I'm still about. Yeah, what I'm still about. 

[00:09:57] Jon: So, fine. But that wider point is right. And actually, of course, Citizen [00:10:00] Advice more broadly is right, which is that, you know, As much as you'd like to do preventative work to stop people falling into crisis, and actually one of our strategic priorities is trying to explore that and see how, how closely we can get to the front end of the journey for people to stop them falling into crisis on all the other areas we work in, like debt, kind of welfare, housing, the reality is it's really difficult to, educate people to the fullest extent that you can give them bits of information that were useful to their situations as they come around.

[00:10:25] Jon: But to your point, Lou, no one has got the capacity or the bandwidth within their lives [00:10:30] necessarily to kind of learn all these things they might need to know in case one of many different pitfalls comes up later in life. It's just really difficult. And that's why the work of training standards, citizens advice in the consumer space, but as Judith again, we'll talk about in a moment, citizens advice more widely within the communities is so important because if you do need help.

[00:10:46] Jon: You can find it when it's relevant to you rather than trying to learn it in advance kind of thing 

[00:10:50] Adam: Yeah, absolutely. And Judith, so to you, so you, um, you work in Gateshead, is, is, is that, is that, is that within a branch in Gateshead, or are you a [00:11:00] part of the, a wider area? 

[00:11:02] Judith: Yes, and I've been a, um, citizens advice Gateshead for 18 years now, um, and I started as a volunteer.

[00:11:08] Judith: We're not a branch. We are a separate charity, um, a separate local charity that serves our local population. But Citizens Advice Gateshead is different to other Citizens Advice. We're the biggest in the country in terms of turnover and impact. And we deliver not just locally, but we deliver stuff regionally and we deliver stuff nationally.

[00:11:29] Judith: In the last [00:11:30] year we had 19, 000 local contacts. That's in our Gateshead population, um, supporting with around 20 million worth of income generation back into people's pockets. That's in the realms of, you know, welfare benefits, um, applications and awards, debt written off, debt paid off. payments re managed and things like compensation for things like consumer issues gone wrong.

[00:11:55] Judith: Nationally, our contacts are around 300, 000. That includes [00:12:00] the consumer service that we deliver on behalf of Citizens Advice nationally. We're one of seven local Citizens Advice that deliver the service. I'm really proud to do that. It's, it's one of our biggest services within Citizens Advice Gateshead.

[00:12:13] Judith: Uh, but yeah. Um, and now I've lost what your original question was, Adam. 

[00:12:18] Adam: No, I think, I think, I think, I think you've answered a lot of it. It's, it's fantastic. Because, because the remit of Citizens Advice is, is so, it's so big, isn't it? You, you could, you can go to Citizens Advice for quite a lot of, of [00:12:30] varying issues.

[00:12:31] Adam: And I know you, you mentioned about, about that debt crisis. I think the, um, the Citizens Advice team do the cost of living crisis webinar, which I, which I've attended a couple of, which are very, very good. So do you, do you see that coming into your teams quite a lot there around the, the increase in the debt that people are accruing over, over it?

[00:12:49] Judith: Yeah, yeah. Um, I mean, the crisis and the cost of living crisis is, is very much particularly locally, massive focus for people at the minute. We know from our data locally that we've [00:13:00] supported 25 percent of our, of the people that come and see us are in crisis and need crisis support. And that crisis support is a form of kind of food bank vouchers, energy vouchers to top up the energy meter.

[00:13:11] Judith: And because they're in crisis. Getting the bandwidth to do something else is, is just not there with them. Um, you know, often we have two, three, four contacts with somebody in order that we get underneath what's going on to try and remove that crisis from them and, and get them to a place where. They're no longer chronically [00:13:30] using a food bank or, you know, no longer, like, threatened that they're not going to be able to cook tea tonight because they've not got enough gas on the meter.

[00:13:38] Judith: Those sort of things, you know, we're very much, we'd really love to move from crisis to prevention work. Um, because it's a lot easier to do, you know, I often talk about the difference between prevention and, and what happens when you're in a crisis and when you're in a crisis, everything is just like really knotted up and it just takes forever to untie all that stuff.

[00:13:58] Judith: And, you know, I talk about advisors getting a [00:14:00] big pair of scissors and having to cut through great big knots. Whereas if people came to us earlier, at the point at which they think something's happening. It's often just a bow that we can just help them to untie. 

[00:14:12] Adam: But we're all British, we're all resolute, you know, we don't need help, surely.

[00:14:17] Louise: Similar to the doctors, isn't it? Like you go, you don't feel very well, you go, I'll leave it for a couple of weeks till I get better. I 

[00:14:22] Adam: don't want to be a burden, you know, it's that kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah, 

[00:14:25] Judith: yeah. I'll be fine. Yeah, and I, but also, you know, there's, there's an [00:14:30] element of shame in all of that.

[00:14:31] Judith: Yeah, yeah, 

[00:14:32] Louise: there's embarrassment around, 

[00:14:33] Judith: yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I can't, you know, I can't afford, I've got no food, I can't feed my kids. You know, there isn't any electricity. Ooh, I've got all this debt and I'm, uh, you know, the landlord's on my back. It is, it's just shameful asking for help, actually. 

[00:14:48] Louise: It's also, Judith, we met on a meeting a little while ago, didn't we?

[00:14:50] Louise: Where, and a lot of the work around, so it's vulnerability, isn't it? So if you're going to ask someone for help, you are, you're potentially, you're exposing yourself as being vulnerable, which [00:15:00] is. can be uncomfortable and embarrassing and all of those things. And I think, and one of the things that you said, and it stayed with me and I use it all the time, is a person is vulnerable if they have a problem they don't know how to solve.

[00:15:10] Louise: Yeah, 

[00:15:11] Judith: yeah, 

[00:15:11] Louise: definitely. Um, which, which again, so from all of the things that you're seeing from a, from a debt perspective, from a, um, because it would make people feel like some of those things you've said, that people aren't unable to look after themselves or their children, which nobody wants to be in that situation.

[00:15:28] Louise: From a From a consumer friend perspective, [00:15:30] a lot of the stuff we deal with in relation to scams and your rights when you're buying goods. This is, that's the lower end of the problems that you're currently seeing in local communities. 

[00:15:40] Judith: It is that if, I think lower end probably removes some of that shame and, and inability to manage.

[00:15:47] Judith: I, I, you know, that, that phrase that I use and I'll, I'll wait for the royalty check to come through the post Louise. But, you know, that, that phrase that I use about it. Being vulnerable is having a problem and you don't know what to do with it. And [00:16:00] I'll just, I'll just tell you a little story about that because it doesn't matter how much money you've got or not got.

[00:16:05] Judith: And it doesn't matter how well educated you are or not. If you've got a problem, it's, it really makes you very vulnerable. And we, so we're open Saturdays and Sundays now as well, which also makes us different from other citizens advice. We, we, we are open seven days a week, but we had a couple come in a few weeks ago and they had bought sofa and they had said, spent a huge amount of money on this sofa.

[00:16:27] Judith: Like I could not fathom why you would spend that much money on [00:16:30] the sofa, but they had, it was a handmade thing and it was lovely fabric and it went, you know, and she was telling us all about how, you know, it, it matched everything in their living room and all this sort of stuff, but the sofa was faulty and the manufacturer was not engaging with them about this sofa.

[00:16:46] Judith: And. He, the man in the couple, he just could not speak because he was so angry and so distressed that they had spent all this money on this sofa and they could not get a resolution that suited. And he [00:17:00] actually stood in our waiting room and said, look, you're, to his missus, you're just going to have to talk to these people.

[00:17:05] Judith: You're just going to have to tell the problem because I just can't speak. I'm so angry. I cannot speak. You know, and that's, that's a man who's, Got an education. He, you know, he was from a good area in Gateshead, you know, they obviously had money cause they'd spent cash on this sofa. It wasn't even like they'd gone out and got credit for it.

[00:17:20] Judith: They'd spent pound notes on it. So, you know, that just, it just shows that not knowing what to do makes you really vulnerable. [00:17:30] 

[00:17:30] Louise: This is why we, anyone could be vulnerable at any time and it's, it's situational or marketplace. So we're even with the accessing redress. And when I say accessing redress, I'm playing English that people just getting some, getting something repaired or getting their money back, people, it's so difficult for people to do that, which is why citizens advice is so important because you're the ones that help people to do that.

[00:17:54] Louise: Like you're like the funnel, aren't you? Like chuck it all in. Then actually the help comes out of that because we're, we're, [00:18:00] people are unable to do it themselves or organizations are making it too difficult for people. To do it, which is again, we should be making people being able to access redress, get their money back, get something repaired so much easier than we currently do.

[00:18:14] Louise: I 

[00:18:15] Jon: think it's about kind of demystifying it and kind of empowering people, you know, regardless of what situation they find themselves in, you know, trying to lift people up where they're able to. manage these things for themselves effectively by giving them the information and arming them with the things they need or [00:18:30] getting them support if they're unable to do that for themselves.

[00:18:32] Jon: To Judith's point, sometimes people are unable, even if you give them the information to act alone and their circumstances dictate that more is required for them. And the local offices in particular are fantastic at being able to step in. And we work with some other organizations who are able to do casework for people as well.

[00:18:46] Jon: When, you know, someone needs to engage the trader on their behalf or someone needs to engage the energy supply to get them to do what they need to do. It's not a one size fits all solution and Citizens Advice kind of doesn't present itself in that way because we're charity, there are limits to what we can [00:19:00] do and we'd always want to do more.

[00:19:01] Jon: And again, Judith, I think you'd speak to that as well, but it's absolutely about trying to give people a platform to to come out the other side of these problems they face. And when we talk about vulnerability, you know, you can categorize it in loads of different ways, but a lot of this stuff is kind of Temporary, if you like, to give it, you know, you go into a petition of vulnerability for because of your circumstances, for some people it can be longer, for some people it can be shorter, for some people it can be deeper or narrower sort of thing, but fundamentally what we try to do is help people kind of get to the [00:19:30] other side of that.

[00:19:31] Louise: Yeah, because it dips, it's dynamic, isn't it? We move in and out of those periods of vulnerability or susceptibility or whatever that is at that particular time. John, 

[00:19:38] Adam: can I just quickly ask you, I mean, you mentioned charity, so Citizens Advice is a Charitable organization. You have a huge amount of both employees and volunteers.

[00:19:51] Adam: Where, where does the, where, where, where, where does the funding come from? Who who's paying for this? How is, how is it being paid for? 

[00:19:57] Jon: Well, let's start by drawing out what you've just said at the end there, [00:20:00] Adam, which is the amount of volunteers we've got. And again, Judith would speak more to this, but I think across the entire England and Wales, we've got about 16, 000 volunteers or something.

[00:20:07] Jon: A huge number of people that give up their time to support their communities. A huge number of people that. We couldn't do what we do without quite frankly. So drawing attention to him is absolutely the right thing to do. We are a charity, so both nationally and locally we've set up as a charity. And actually when you ask people, they don't often know that.

[00:20:22] Jon: I think, you know, they think we're a business or they think we're kind of some sort of quango or something like that. Uh, you know, government type offshoot sort of [00:20:30] thing. So some of our funding is from government. To be clear, some of our funding is from corporate donors, people we work alongside who are trying to do the right thing and want to support us.

[00:20:38] Jon: There is fundraising activity that goes on as well. There's a whole range of ways in which we try and kind of bring money through the door. Um, I think what is important is that Citizens Advice has always been able to, Demonstrate impact for that spend. I don't know all the calculations, so please don't ask me to do maths.

[00:20:54] Jon: But we've got some numbers that we submit to government and other organisations. And I think for every pound spent on advice [00:21:00] provision nationally, the benefit to the wider economy and the benefit to the people we help is about 13. So a 13 to 1 ratio is kind of, you know, a good deal. Pretty good. It stacks up pretty well, I think.

[00:21:09] Jon: And it's testament to the people on the front line, the people on the grounds, the people taking those calls and doing the advice work that are kind of driving those outcomes for people that, you know, there's many ways you can measure the difference of citizens advice makes, but from a quantifiable way, there's one of them.

[00:21:24] Louise: I know each day will be different. What would an average day look like for you in [00:21:30] Citizens Advice? 

[00:21:30] Judith: For me? Well, so I'm the service delivery director. So my responsibilities are around what are we delivering? Are we meeting our contractual obligations? Are we meeting our obligations under grant agreements?

[00:21:42] Judith: issues in, in staffing, um, you know, and just making sure that we're, we're doing the due. But I've got, I've got loads of people to support me with that. We employ 249 people at Citizens West Gates. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:21:54] Louise: So typically, so how many people will you get coming through the door on a daily basis asking for advice?[00:22:00] 

[00:22:00] Judith: We have a front door in this building, but we also have front doors in lots of different areas in the, in the borough. Six places where we're embedded in a host of BCSC. So, um, a lot of them are kind of around family support charities who are working really locally within Gateshead. And we put a worker embedded in their organisation.

[00:22:21] Judith: So they're just going to seek help from the organisation. And it might be that Citizens Advice help them, or it might be that the charity help [00:22:30] them, or it might be that the person who's in housing in the council helps them. But as far as the individual's concerned, they just get the help. there. Our front doors look very different and 

[00:22:39] Louise: They're different every day.

[00:22:41] Louise: Massive amount of range of issues that come. So then if you were to see, so just to join the dots a little bit, so if you see a spike in issues in your local area, that feeds back into the national policy perspective. So into John. John, at the moment, what are your current policy objectives. What are you [00:23:00] trying to change from a national perspective?

[00:23:02] Jon: I mean, I mean, cost of living has driven a lot of the kind of the broader work we're doing, as you can imagine, in terms of making society fairer, I think, for people. I think in the consumer space, we've had some Success is more recently in things like loyalty penalties and things like that from a consumer perspective.

[00:23:18] Jon: You might have seen some of that in the telecom space. I think with a new government at the moment, we are just in the starting thrones of kind of painting to them the picture of what we think a fair society would be. So our current priorities are, as you can probably imagine, [00:23:30] meeting a lot of new ministers, meeting a lot of their teams, talking to them about, the things we think that are important and the things we think that we want, want to change and, and the scale of issues we've seen in current, you know, cost of living was really interesting because it changed the dynamic of kind of the people we help to some degree.

[00:23:46] Jon: So taking one example of budget deficits, typically speaking, historically, the greatest number of people we would have seen from a housing perspective in a budget deficit would have been those in social housing. And then those in private rent and kind of homeowners would be [00:24:00] slightly more initiated from that position.

[00:24:02] Jon: Cost of living crisis and the increase in interest rates, etc. And this is one of those briefings you mentioned, Adam, the cost of living crisis, uh, briefings we were running on a monthly basis. It actually demonstrated that budget deficits were becoming greater in those that were homeowners and private renters than social housing.

[00:24:16] Jon: Now that's not to say those in social housing didn't have other impacts, of course. I'm looking at it through one lens only there. What's really interesting is I think there's some stats that say, you know, Everyone that comes to a citizen's advice for help, uh, not to one of our national funded services, [00:24:30] but to an office like Judith, they present an average with between four and five different issues interrelated at the same time.

[00:24:34] Jon: So they don't come with one issue and we try our best to make it clear to follow on our website. So we have a debt pages and we have a housing page and we have a welfare page. But as Judith speaks about earlier with the spaghetti in the bar, which I thought was a really nice metaphor. People don't arrive like that.

[00:24:49] Jon: People don't know how to differentiate. It's just one big problem to them. And so a lot of the work is actually triage, diagnosis and understanding it. By doing that, you're able to give the best advice to help them help [00:25:00] themselves. 

[00:25:01] Louise: Well, it's the latest stats around, so from a vulnerability perspective, we're seeing it's homeowners and people that are renting as well.

[00:25:07] Louise: So we take our eye off the ball, don't we? So from a social housing perspective, people instantly go, right, those people are going to need extra help. So we chuck a lot of resource and a lot of attention at that. And therefore, then we're not looking over here, which is then what happens over here is you'll see that the cost of living crisis has hit everybody, hasn't it?

[00:25:23] Louise: I don't think there's anybody that's gone. Do you know what? I've just breezed through that. I breezed through the interest rates and everything going [00:25:30] up, just absolutely, I'm good with it. 

[00:25:33] Jon: Sorry, Judith, I know you and I have spoken about this before, but, um, I think there could be some talk in certain circles of the media with new government in such a way that the cost of living crisis is over kind of thing, we're moving past that point.

[00:25:46] Jon: Judith, I mean, I'll let you speak on this, but I think the impacts of that will be felt in communities for a long time to come, you know, we're at the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. 

[00:25:54] Judith: Yeah, definitely. This data comes from not, you know, those cost of living briefings that [00:26:00] happen, but also places like Joseph Rowntree Foundation, um, put a lot of work out there.

[00:26:04] Judith: And what we're actually, what we're actually seeing is people who are homeowners or decent wage earners then, rather than minimum wage, wage earners who are, had, had savings. have used those savings to manage, but they're now coming to the end of those savings. So what happens next? Well, the next step is that they're going to end up in debt.

[00:26:24] Judith: And then, and then, so then, you know, they get into a cycle where, where there are people who, [00:26:30] again, don't know what to do and can't cope. Um, and you know, I, I don't, I don't want this to take away from people who are living in poverty right now and are really suffering. But the point is, is that this is going to make things worse.

[00:26:42] Judith: And that the people who, who should be coping aren't coping, you know, and it's, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's not right, really. The other thing that we've got to focus on at the minute is the managed migration piece of work where people who are on what's called legacy benefits. [00:27:00] So things that you might know as job seekers allowance and employment support allowance.

[00:27:04] Judith: And. working tax credits, which are for people who are working, they're being told they've got to move on to universal credit and people are getting a letter. Saying you've got to move to universal credit and a lot of people don't know what to do about that either. So part of our mobilizing knowledge piece is we're doing a lot of work about making sure that people locally know about managed migration, know what this letter is that's going to come through the post [00:27:30] and making sure that they know and understand all of that work as well.

[00:27:33] Judith: And the other piece of work, of course, is the announcement from the government that they're going to get rid of winter fuel payments for every pensioner. 

[00:27:38] Louise: I had this Judith with my mum this week because she was, she was really upset by the fact they've taken this away from her. Now she doesn't, she doesn't have a huge pension, but, and, and she looks after, she helps a lot of her friends with some of their finances and stuff like that.

[00:27:51] Louise: And she's like, the problem is she said, I know I'm not on pension credit. She said, but I've come to expect and [00:28:00] budget this money in and now it's just been taken away. And she said, it might not sound like a lot of money to you, but she said it is a lot of money. And it's going to make a difference to me and to my friends because it's something that we've come to rely on.

[00:28:13] Louise: And it's just literally been whipped away. 

[00:28:16] Judith: Yeah, 

[00:28:16] Louise: definitely. So it does make a difference to people, doesn't it, as well? It does. 

[00:28:20] Judith: Yeah, absolutely. And I know that that's kind of shifting away a bit from consumer friend. But, um, it's actually about people's rights and responsibilities and making sure that [00:28:30] people know and understand them.

[00:28:31] Judith: No matter what. What the issues are, making sure that people know and understand their rights and responsibilities. 

[00:28:37] Adam: So around that knowledge piece, that kind of proactive advice that you do, how, how do you get that information out to as many different peoples from all walks of walks of life? And how do you ensure that you get that information out to as many people as you can?

[00:28:50] Judith: Really through our networks, um, we've got a lot of local networks and specifically networks, you know, other charities and having those close working [00:29:00] relationships with other charities and particularly those charities that are working in areas where there might be, well, we call them the global ethnic majority.

[00:29:08] Judith: So people who are black and ethnically marginalized, um, those areas, people, we've got a particular area in Gates, It said where we've got quite a big asylum seeker and then refugee population that being placed there. And we've actually, um, we've won an award, um, a citizen's advice award for that work.

[00:29:26] Adam: Well done. Well done. 

[00:29:27] Judith: Excellent. So the Joseph Rowntree [00:29:30] Foundation did some work around how families living in poverty, family that is led by a person who is black. Those families are usually. Um, I can't remember the statistic now, but are more likely to be living in poverty than a family which is led by a white person.

[00:29:48] Judith: Recognizing that this particular area that's called Bensham in Gateshead had a high population of black and ethnically marginalized, we set about finding out a way of how we could get information out to them and make [00:30:00] sure that they knew and understood that they could come to us. And that was actually about making sure that we looked like them.

[00:30:06] Judith: So we had somebody who worked for us and she's, um, she's an ethnic Muslim woman, one of our advisors, and we placed her in that area so that she, you know, we looked like the people who needed the support. Um, we also did a piece of work around what are the main languages. That we need to translate information into in Gateshead.

[00:30:27] Judith: So we worked with a couple of partners, um, work [00:30:30] specifically with, with those groups, and we said, right, what are your top four languages? And they, they, they told us what their top four languages were. So we translated information, leaflets and what have you, and stuff that goes out to people to make sure that they could come to us.

[00:30:44] Judith: We make sure that we always have translation available on the phone. Um, for anybody that comes in and we have a translating thingy on the, um, and that's very technical on the website. I know what you 

[00:30:54] Adam: mean. 

[00:30:55] Louise: My final point, um, if you, so Judith, if you could have right [00:31:00] now, this is, you might be able to you can't cause we'll edit it out.

[00:31:03] Louise: But right. If you could have one wish in relation to what you could change. Money is no issue here. You can have whatever you want. But what would, what would you do? 

[00:31:13] Judith: I would upgrade the benefit system. It's, it's really clear. So during COVID, people on universal credit got an extra 20 quid on their benefits.

[00:31:21] Judith: The data shows that they weren't in crisis as much at that point. Yeah, there was lots of stuff going on around COVID and around getting out and all that [00:31:30] sort of stuff. But because they were given that 20 pound uplift a week, which is a lot of money, Yeah. That's 90 a month. They weren't suffering as much as what they are now.

[00:31:40] Judith: Also the government brought in cost of living payments, which dropped into people who were on universal credit. They were means tested payments. They would drop into people's benefit payments, um, at certain periods in the year. The data, and particularly food bank data, shows that when those payments drop into [00:32:00] people, then they don't need support quite as much.

[00:32:03] Judith: Right. So, uh, the food bank data would show that, um, they had less people coming to access them after those payments had dropped into account. So really, and it doesn't have to cost a huge amount of money, but let's give people enough benefits to cover the cost of living. 

[00:32:21] Louise: Judith for Prime Minister, I think, is the way forward.

[00:32:25] Louise: Uh, same question to you, John, just to end. If you had one wish, what would it be? Oh, I suppose 

[00:32:29] Jon: mine's a [00:32:30] little bit more meta than that. Maybe I can be Judith's deputy or something, but, um, I think a fairer, more just society, that kind of means the role of citizens advice is diminished, if not extinguished, I suppose.

[00:32:41] Jon: We'd still be here to answer people's questions, but we perhaps wouldn't need to advocate so strongly for people. We wouldn't need to help pull people out of crisis, you know. We're here because Some of the building blocks around people's lives just aren't in place, and there's loads of reasons for that that I can't really have time to get into now, but It's not, it's not the way it should be.

[00:32:59] Jon: And [00:33:00] people like Judith, people like myself, people like the advisors and the volunteers and everyone that works at Citizens Advice, they get out of bed with a mission and the mission is to try and help a little bit to kind of impact and address that imbalance. And some days we do really well with it.

[00:33:12] Jon: Other days we do slightly less well than we'd like to do with it. But fundamentally, I think that's what we'd all hope for. 

[00:33:17] Adam: You're, you're, you're the turkeys that vote for Christmas, aren't you? 

[00:33:20] Jon: Well, yeah, yeah. And we're not ashamed about that. Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:33:25] Louise: We say, yeah, what we say is if we do in scams world or in consumer friend, if we do [00:33:30] ourselves, if we do it so well that we don't, we're not needed anymore.

[00:33:32] Louise: That is the dream. Do That is the dream. Do yourself out of a job. That's the aspiration, isn't it? All the time. Thank you very much. 

[00:33:40] Adam: Thank you so much for coming today and being on our podcast. We will put links to a citizen's advice in the show. No, because you, my friend is available. Cause you were friend.

[00:33:48] Adam: org. uk. Please like, subscribe, listen to the podcast, rate them as well. That'd be great. Thank you very much, Judith. Thank you for coming on today. 

[00:33:56] Judith: It's been absolute pleasure. I love chatting. 

[00:33:58] Adam: Good, good, John. [00:34:00] Thank you very much for coming today. Great to see you 

[00:34:01] Jon: both. 

[00:34:01] Adam: Much 

[00:34:02] Jon: appreciated. 

[00:34:02] Adam: Lovely. Thank you very much.

[00:34:04] Adam: And see you next time. Cheers, Lou. 

[00:34:06] Louise: Bye. This is consumer friend.