Citizens Advice Consumer Work Plan 2023/24

Post

6 June 2023

Citizens Advice Consumer Work Plan 2023/24 651 KB

Citizens Advice Consumer Work Plan 2023/24: Summary of responses 159 KB

Since our last annual work plan, we’ve seen unprecedented demand for advice. With a cost of living crisis driven by historically high energy prices, our role as consumer advocate has taken on a renewed urgency.

Our teams nationally and locally have responded quickly to help consumers through these difficult times. Our data continues to show elevated need and on energy alone we helped more people in 2022 than in 2019 and 2020 combined.

As the crisis deepens, ensuring a fair deal for consumers - and particularly for people from marginalised groups - remains essential. New technologies, products and services can deliver savings but only if they are designed with the interests of consumers at their heart.

Delivering net zero ambitions is also central to a future energy market and is a long term response to high energy costs. But as markets change quickly, it is again vital that the consumer voice is heard.

The four main themes for our work in 2023/24 are:

Making markets work for consumers - speaking out on behalf of consumers where there are market failures
Better value infrastructure - making sure investment is well managed to deliver value for money and good consumer outcomes
A fair deal for consumers in vulnerable circumstances - so that those most likely to suffer harm can access good value products and services
Protecting consumers in rapidly evolving markets - maximising the opportunities presented by innovation to change and improve the way markets serve consumers

These themes will guide our advocacy work in the coming year. We also recognise that in such a fast-changing world, our work will need to be agile and adaptive, since policy decisions that would previously have been subject to months of debate are now having to be made in weeks and days.

We remain committed to delivering positive outcomes for consumers throughout the difficult year ahead.

Matthew Upton

Interim Executive Director of Policy and Advocacy