As a volunteer working on IT support at a CAB in London, I can shed light on what's happening in Citizens Advice Bureaux.

First, CABx are staffed mainly by volunteers - we are the largest voluntary organisation in the UK; there are 800+ bureaux in England & Wales, with 80+ in Scotland, with over 1,000 offices.  All the bureaux are autonomous charities; our national umbrella organisation is called Citizens Advice, but that's just a trading name - the official name is the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux.  To be a member of the national association and to be entitled to call ourselves a Citizens Advice Bureau, each bureau must pass stringent quality tests and we are audited against the standards every three years.  The audit really is thorough to maintain the reputation of the "brand"; several bureaux every year fail the audit and have to undertake remedial action - being ejected from membership is not unknown.  CABx get the bulk of their funding from their local authority, which explains why there are apparent variations in the level of services; only Citizens Advice itself gets funding from central government, and they've just had a 20% reduction in their grant.  The reluctance of some local authorities to fund their local CAB leads to residents approaching bureaux in neighbouring boroughs, a particular problem in London.  Increasingly, we are seeing local authorities demanding that we serve only our local residents and turn away anyone who doesn't live or work in our borough.  For a telephone service, it's rather difficult to control who rings.

Several postings above have commented on the difficulty of getting a bureau to answer.  Sadly, it is true that very few bureaux provide a good telephone service.  Telephone advice services have always been the poor relation within bureaux simply because demand outstrips our ability to supply and, when we have a queue of people waiting at the door, it's the telephone that doesn't get answered.  But with the ever-changing way our clients expect to access our services, it's clear that there is a huge unmet demand via the telephone, and many bureaux are attempting to improve their services both by dedicating a greater proportion of resources and by innovation.  The "Single Telephone Number" project mentioned in an earlier posting is one such development being promoted by Citizens Advice, which aims to distribute calls to advisers in bureaux anywhere in the country, the key concept being that we can be most efficient if we don't have advisers sitting idle because there are gaps in demand for any local telephone service.  Sadly, this project is somewhat controversial within bureaux and is not making the progress originally anticipated.

Clearly, with a national service it has to have some sort of switching facility and requires a non-geographic number, in this case we've been told it will be an 0844 number.  The funds generated by the 0844 number will go to cover the infrastructure costs of Citizens Advice; the bureaux actually answering the calls won't see a penny - obviously a bone of contention!  The national system will filter calls based on the location of the caller - if you are calling from an area where the local bureau is a member of the national scheme, you'll be put through, but not necessarily to anyone local - the adviser could be at the other end of the country; if your local bureau is not a member, you'll be told to contact your bureau direct - hard luck!

Many bureaux do already use 0845 numbers (and, controversially, a few 0870s), though this is not usually for raising revenue (I doubt many bureaux managers are aware that it's possible to take a share of the revenue!).  The basis for most bureaux using a non-geographic number is to be able to divert calls via Q-CAll, run by Call Handling, which offers automated information responses out-of-hours.  The Q-Call service costs money to bureaux, hence the appeals for donations and why some bureaux just can't afford it.

Some bureaux have taken the stance to retain a geographic number because:
a) it discourages callers from outside the local-rate area.
b) many of our callers use pay-as-you-go mobilephones because they cannot afford land-lines.  Mobilephones are approaching 50% of incoming calls.  Since call charges for non-geographic numbers from some mobilephones can be outrageously expensive (50p/min), we've made a deliberate decision not to penalise our clients.

I hope that puts some perspective of the problems facing Citizens Advice Bureaux.  (The saynoto0870 web-site is bookmarked on all our computers in my bureau.)

CABvolunteer wrote on Jun 18^th, 2008 at 1:33pm:


Unfortunately you have been mislead by your advisers who have perpetuated yet again the untruth that in order to have "some sort of switching facility" you "require a non-geographic number".   You can have all the switching you like with complete flexibility with a normal geographic number.   Please don't be taken in by the telecoms industry on this point.   I am sure they sell many, perhaps most, non-geo numbers on this argument that you can only have call switching with ngns -- it simply is not true.  

You can find out the truth about this with just a few minutes specific searching on the web; or if you would like more specific information or names of companies which can potentially provide such a switching service to you, then please let me know.

Your posting is generally most helpful and informative and I would emphasise that I am not criticising you personally, I am trying to counter this general misunderstanding about call switching which the telecoms industry perpetuate.

It's clear that the folks contributing to this site know much more about telecoms than the IT support people in CABx.  Might I suggest you consider volunteering at your local CAB to employ your expertise for the benefit of your local community and the whole Citizens Advice Bureau service?  It's apparent that the planning of national and local telephone services lacks technical expertise.

Just a point of clarification, because my posting was maybe a little confusing in its phrasing:

Whilst the majority of CABx management might have little idea on how to extract a share of revenue from 08x numbers, I'm sure the bureaux which utilise 0870 numbers are fully aware of the financial benefits to themselves.  I should also point out that the CAB service strives to continue to offer a free service to all-comers - there is a substantial sector within the CAB service which deplores the use of 0870 numbers; if bureaux could afford it, we'd have 0800 numbers for our telephone advice services! There has been some debate internally over the impact of non-geographic numbers on our clients, which is how I heard that mobilephones could be so expensive, but that debate lacks technical input.

I also need to reiterate that all the 800+ bureaux around the country are independent, with their own boards of trustees.  Each bureau is responsible for running its own face-to-face and telephone advice services, and each decides whether to use a geographic, 0845 or 0870 number for their own local services. Whilst our national association, Citizens Advice, might like to think they are running things, the Citizens Advice Bureau service is very far from being a uniform and monolithic organisation.  There is still, just, the opportunity for individuals to innovate and provide a better service for their community, and, by example, encourage others in bureaux elsewhere to adopt best practise.

Thanks for your input.

[Just to be pedantic, BT still do charge different rates for local and national calls where the customer is not on a Calling Plan.]

[quote author=CABvolunteer link=1124361686/15#19 date=1213964801]I suggest you consider volunteering at your local CAB to employ your expertise for the benefit of your local community and the whole Citizens Advice Bureau service[/quote]
CABV

I have a number of ideas about how this could be achieved more effectively. Please get in touch by email or PM.

SCV

It is stated that “The Citizens Advice service provides free, independent, confidential and impartial advice to everyone on their rights and responsibilities”.

All 084x and 087x telephone numbers are “revenue sharing”. This means that part of the charge paid by the caller is transferred to the person called. This may by used to subsidise the cost of their telephone service, rather than taken as income, however this does not affect the fact that any service delivered using this type of number cannot truly be described as “free”.

If there is some purpose in using a non-geographic telephone number with the caller only paying the telephone company for carrying the call, these must be from the 03xx range, on which revenue sharing is prohibited. Charges for calling 03xx numbers must be no greater than that for calling local (or indeed other geographic) numbers, often through a call-inclusive package where no charge is levied for any individual call lasting less than one hour.

Whilst use of revenue sharing numbers by CABx may reduce the burden on budgets and those who provide funding, it threatens the basis on which that funding is provided in the first place. Those who volunteer may be pleased that this situation enables more services to be provided for a particular level of funding, but may be concerned that whilst some costs are met by clients, theirs are not.

It is vital that CABx and “Citizens Advice”, the national association, get to grips with this matter, declare an awareness of the need to cease this practice and start the process of making alternative arrangements.

I believe that an opportunity should be provided for this to occur before members start to seek to engage the media in drawing attention to this particular example (amongst many) of inappropriate use of revenue sharing numbers. Such attention should be focussed on those who fund CABx and those who volunteer, as many clients will still find that they get “value-for-money” despite having to pay for CAB advice!

(I hope these comments are useful.)

I notice on their web site they are advertising their number as 'local rate'. Not so, as local rate calls were abolished several years ago, so this is mis leading and probably illeagal to advertise it this way.