Publications

CAS is enthusiastic about the potential for the devolution of winter heating benefits to drive a meaningful improvement in the rates and lived experience of fuel poverty in Scotland. Done well, devolution of Cold Weather Payments (CWPs) and the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP), taken alongside the assistance provided by the Warm Home Discount (WHD) scheme, the Scottish Government’s fuel poverty and energy efficiency programmes, and additional support for vulnerable households such as the Child Winter Heating Assistance, could create a coherent package of measures which work together more effectively to reduce inequality and improve the health and wellbeing of citizens most vulnerable to the effects of living in a cold home.

We agree that reforms to the existing CWP scheme could deliver greater consumer benefits than the scheme that currently exists. However, we do not agree that the Scottish Government’s proposals for Low Income Winter Heating Assistance (LIWHA) achieve this. Indeed, we are concerned that for many consumers, LIWHA will often make fuel poverty, and in particular extreme fuel poverty, worse. Evidence also strongly suggests that in a cold winter, LIWHA is likely to prove prejudicial to the health of many vulnerable low income households. We are extremely concerned about the negative consumer outcomes this will deliver, including the impact on winter mortality. CAS cannot support a policy that holds significant potential to increase inequality and endanger the health and wellbeing of consumers in Scotland, and as a result we cannot support the Scottish Government’s proposals for LIWHA in their current form. We are however mindful of the tight deadlines to which the Scottish Government is working to deliver the devolution of CWPs before the end of 2022. We therefore propose a practical series of evidence-led actions that we believe would safely deliver a Minimum Viable Product to the required timeframes which significantly improves on the current CWP scheme and to which future improvements can be made as time and resources allow

This is the Annual Report for Citizens Advice Scotland for the 2020-21 financial year.

CAS has responded to the Scottish Legal Aid Board's consultation on civil legal aid financial eligibility assessment

Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) is supportive of the proposed approach to ending poverty and the need for food banks. The twin emphasis on prevention and response ensures the reasons for food bank use are tackled at source, rather than focusing only on how emergency support is delivered, and overall CAS would agree that moving towards a cash-first approach to food aid is a positive step. Measures which enable people to choose their own food can restore dignity in emergency food provision, enable people to buy food they enjoy and choose the items that will make the most difference to themselves and their families.

However, there are additional dimensions to the need for food banks that CAS would call for further consideration of. These include:

›     The role of advice services in food bank referrals

›     Availability of social security support for different types of people

›     Debt as a driving factor in food bank use

›     Fuel poverty as a driving factor in food bank use

›     Housing costs as a driving factor for food bank use

›     Potential barriers to a cash-first scheme

Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) welcomes the Scottish Government’s support for improving working practices across Scotland. Progress on equal employment access and pay for women, minority ethnic, and disabled workers is welcome, as is the commitment to introduce a requirement on public sector grants recipients to pay at least the real Living Wage to all employees by summer 2022. These actions will improve working conditions for many.

However, the majority of people CAB see every day do not work in the sectors supported by the most ambitious Fair Work plans. They will instead be in low-paid and insecure work, often facing violations of very basic employment rights. For these people, the first step to a Fair Work Nation must be better enforcement of their already-existing rights.

Advice services like CAB play an important role in informing people about their employment rights, giving them a more effective voice in challenging unfair work practices. This is particularly necessary for low-paid jobs where union membership is likely to be less concentrated.

In 2020-21, Scotland’s Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) network gave 74,994 pieces of employment advice to clients – 8% of all advice provided across the network last year – making employment the third most popular advice area, behind social security and debt advice.

Here is the Autumn/Winter 2021 edition of Voice. In this issue we focus on some if the green issues that we have all been thinking about in the wake of COP26. We hear from colleagues who attended the climate summit and learn a bit about their roles there. Patrick Harvie MSP shares his thoughts on the event and tells us how we, as a network, can support Net Zero ambitions. We also take a look at a range of energy related issues - from the BESW campaign to fuel poverty and rising energy costs. The Increase Volunteering project team gave us the low down on how they ae supporting training and Roxburgh CAB are ahead of the game in helping their local community to comply with upcoming fire and smoke alarm regulations.

CAS welcomes the Consumer Duty consultation paper. We believe that, in principle, Scottish public bodies should have an embedded duty to consider the impact that decisions related to policy, and adopted practice could, and does, have on those engaging in its services, particularly vulnerable consumers. Scotland’s Citizens Advice network regularly deals with clients who are impacted by a lack of regard to consumer outcomes or who fall victim to poor service design.

We believe that a consumer duty will strengthen consumer protection from unintended consequences resulting from public authority decision-making. It is essential that a consumer duty results in meaningful improvements in the consumer journey and achieves positive outcomes for public authority service users.

Citizens Advice Scotland response to the Scottish Government consultation on COVID recovery