Consumer empowerment partnerships

How a strategic approach to consumer protection is reaping benefits in the battle against sharp practice both online and offline

Published in

Adviser online

4 min readMar 3, 2017

This article was originally published in the January/February 2017 issue of Adviser magazine and was correct at the date of publishing.

In 2013, when Citizens Advice took over responsibility for consumer advocacy and education, one of the delivery mechanisms developed to undertake this work was the creation of Consumer Empowerment Partnerships (CEPs). The partnerships are strategically led by local Citizens Advice who work closely with Trading Standards to lead deliver on consumer empowerment initiatives. The CEPs are strategically led by Citizens Advice, giving a local focus to national plans, but remaining operationally independent.(1)

The Powerful Partnership document(2) provides detail about the original aims and purpose of the CEPs. The CEP model has evolved since then and reduced in numbers, but the aim is still the same — to conduct research and create resources for the network to use to empower consumers to deal with a range of consumer topics. Some examples of the toolkits created are ‘How Citizens Advice can work more effectively with Trading Standards’, ‘How to use social media effectively’ and ‘How to create an effective consumer campaign’.

In 2016–17 CEPs are working on projects to raise awareness and develop resources to tackle key consumer issues as identified by the Consumer Protection Partnership (CPP).(3)

Phone scams

Scam calls are a large problem in the UK and often target the most vulnerable people in our community. We want to reduce the number of people being affected by telephone scams. In particular, the CPP is concerned about the impact of scams on vulnerable, elderly victims, which risks placing heavy costs on the public purse in the long term, including premature entry into full residential care and long-term health problems.

Bristol CEP (Inesl@bristolcab. org.uk) is working on phone scams and will be producing a toolkit on how to educate the public, with various resources and examples that can be adapted for use across the network in local offices. The project will also cover their work with local groups to reach isolated people more susceptible to scams.

Ticketing scams and resales

The CPP identified two areas of concern in the ticketing industry: the sale of fake or nonexistent tickets and the purchase of tickets on a large scale by people to place on secondary ticketing platforms for resale to consumers at inflated prices due to high demand.

This skews the primary tickets market by driving up prices and restricts access to the primary market for the average consumer. Derbyshire District CEP (dawn.mackenzie@ ddcab.org.uk) is working on this research and has been investigating the level of consumer awareness. The CEP has begun a peer-to-peer empowerment programme working with students at Nottingham Trent University and with CEP guidance they have conducted a survey to ascertain students’ awareness of secondary ticketing and how best to protect and empower their peers and allow them to make informed choices. These findings have informed the production of a specific consumer awareness campaign.

Consumer redress for electrical goods

Consumers and retailers are not always clear on who is responsible for providing redress, with retailers incorrectly referring consumers to manufacturers, and the incorrect remedy being offered. The CPP want consumers and retailers to be aware of their rights and responsibilities. Seeking redress shouldn’t be confusing. Hull and East Riding CEP (kate.winstanley@hull-eastridingcab.org.uk) is working to achieve better consumer redress through raising awareness, arming consumers with the information about their rights and campaigning for positive change. Their focus is on ‘Electrical Goods and Consumer Redress’ and they released a video on raising consumer awareness about electrical goods safety.(4)

Digital markets

Consumers increasingly use the internet to compare products and purchase goods and services, and they also increasingly provide personal data online. The CPP state that evidence suggests consumers also appear to be more trusting when shopping online than when shopping in the high street.

Coventry CEP (ehodson@coventrycab.org.uk) is researching the customer experiences of those buying goods from ‘online market places’ like Amazon and Gumtree, in order to generate materials which will help all consumers, but particularly those with mental or physical impairments, to use these sites more effectively. The data-gathering phase of this research uses two surveys — one for frequent users of online market places and one for rare or non-users. These surveys are open to all, however, for the reasons outlined above, they are particularly interested in the experiences of ‘those with disabilities’.(5)

Behavioural insights

Stevenage Citizens Advice (Gbro@stevenagecab.co.uk) is currently delivering the Behavioural Insights project. The team is to develop a set of materials to help energy consumers navigate particular markets better and more confidently. This specialism would mean working with advisers to find out what materials they currently use (if any), what they would find most useful and then developing a set of resources to be shared with the network. This is not a CPP priority area but is an area that the Citizens Advice consumer policy team is working on.(6)

Online consumer rights

Whilst there is not a CEP in Wales the Citizens Advice campaigns team in Wales (alun.evans2@citizensadvice.org.uk) is creating resources to deliver as training sessions around consumer rights in digital markets, buying at a distance and if something goes wrong with a parcel delivery. The education resources will be available for local Citizens Advice to deliver to people in their community.

For further detailed information about each of the projects please use the contact details above, or email education@citizensadvice.org.uk for information about previously commissioned CEPs.

Melanie McGinn works in consumer education at Citizens Advice.