What to expect from us
Citizens Advice Torbay will provide you with:
- Confidential advice. We will not tell anyone about your case and will not pass on anything from our records to anyone outside the Citizens Advice service without your permission, unless we are required to do so by law or it is the right and necessary thing to do. Our records are subject to quality checks. We will respect your data protection rights for any information you provide to us. Please ask to see our Privacy Policy if you would like to know more.
- Follow-up work. Any follow up work will be agreed between your adviser and you. This may include negotiating on your behalf with other organisations by letter or phone. We will discuss any offer with you before accepting it, unless you have specifically told us what to do. We may be able to offer representation at welfare benefit and employment tribunals or if the case is appropriate and we have the resources and you comply with what we expect from you (see over).
- A complaints procedure, if you are not satisfied with the service we have provided. If you wish to complain, please ask for the leaflet which explains how to complain.
What we expect from you
- To keep appointments you have made with us or let us know in advance if you can’t make it.
- To inform us of any changes in your circumstances which may be relevant to your case. Examples of relevant changes are change of address, birth of a child, additional income
- To bring in all the papers relevant to your case which your adviser asks for. This includes notification of court or tribunal dates etc.
- Not to take action on your case on your own behalf without discussing it first with your adviser.
- To provide written evidence of your income, debts or other financial matters where appropriate. Your adviser will let you know what is needed.
- To follow our advice – unless you and your adviser agree you should do something different.
- To be honest with us about the circumstances of your case, for instance by telling us about all your debts and income or what led up to your being asked to leave your employment.
- To always treat our staff and volunteers with dignity and respect.
We need you to respect appointments made
As an advice charity, we aim to provide a high-quality service to as many people as possible; however, our service is always in high demand, and many people across Torbay need our help. An important part of our service is to advise clients by appointment.
When clients miss appointments without giving us notice, it can have a serious impact on the service because that appointment slot is unfilled. This reduces the number of clients that we can see and prevents us from helping more people. For that reason, we ask that all of our clients kindly follow the steps below if you cannot attend an appointment.
If you are going to be late for your appointment
When your appointment is arranged, you will be provided with a telephone number for our ‘client services line’ for the purpose of informing us if you wish to cancel or reschedule your appointment. We ask that you let us know with as much notice as possible if you may arrive late to your appointment. Please note that in most cases, we may need to reschedule your appointment for a different day if you are likely to be more than 15 minutes late for your appointment.
If you are more than 10 minutes late to your appointment, we will attempt to contact you by phone, and if we cannot reach you we will ask that you call us on the ‘client services line’ to reschedule your appointment for another day. Please note that we generally offer 1 to 2 hour appointment slots and can only keep to your allotted appointment times. If you arrive late this may impact our ability to deal with your issue entirely within the intended time.
If you cannot attend your appointment
We understand that sometimes other things come up, but we kindly ask that if you are not able to attend your appointment with us, you telephone our ‘client services line’ and leave us a message to let us know with as much notice as possible. This will allow us to offer your appointment to someone else who needs it.
It’s important that our clients understand that we may not always be able to offer another appointment right away. Therefore, if the matter is time sensitive, whilst we will make every effort to see you within the time frame, we cannot always ensure this will happen. It is important that our clients understand this in order to make informed decisions before cancelling an appointment.
If you repeatedly miss appointments, especially without giving us notice, or refuse our advice, we reserve the right to refuse you future appointments regarding the same issue.
If we need to reschedule your appointment
Whilst we make every effort to ensure that you are seen when your appointment is scheduled, there are occasions when we may need to reschedule your appointment because of illness, or other circumstances beyond our control.
If we need to reschedule your appointment we will make every effort to:
- Contact you as soon as we become aware of the problem. We will always try to telephone you to let you know that there is a problem. This is why it is so important to leave us a telephone number and allow us to leave a voicemail, or offer us an alternative way of getting a message to you.
- If we cannot reach you by telephone and we have your permission, we will leave a voicemail explaining that there is a problem, with a request that you contact us on our ‘Client services line’ to rearrange your appointment.
- If we haven’t heard from you by the end of the day, and we have permission to do so, we will notify you by email of the need to reschedule.
- If we need to reschedule, we will try to offer you another appointment as soon as possible, at the same location as, or one elsewhere if urgency dictates that this is necessary.
We reserve the right to stop advising you if:
- You turn down a reasonable offer from the other party because you wish to take the matter to a tribunal or court hearing. Your adviser will discuss with you whether an offer is reasonable in the circumstances.
- You do not follow our expectations listed here.
We cannot guarantee to take on all cases, even if someone is already a client. We may also have to stop advising you if we believe we cannot make progress on your case for you or there is no further good outcome that can be gained, or if you do not do what we expect of you.
