A key consumer watchdog has been axed: we should be worried

Hmm I'm a supportter of the coalition....however axing COnsumer focus would be a mistake I believe...if anything it should be expanded to maybe include Citizens Advice under it's wing.

Write to you MPs and the Sun or David Cameron asking him to stop! : )

I have just emailed Consumerfocus on the subject of energy price changes and now you tell me the organisation is about to be axed. I guess we will just have to put up with the energy price merry-go-round because Ofgem have never seemed bothered by it.

Sometimes I despair when I read these articles. It would seem that Victoria is ill informed and getting her Citizens Advice mixed up with Citizens Advice bureaux. Whilst the two are intrinsically linked they are seperate entities. Citizens Advice is a national membership organisation (also an independent charity) of which the traditional high street CABx are members of. Every CAB in the country is in turn an independent charity . As members of Citizens Advice the CABx ensure that training, quality of advice promotion etc are undertaken to a membership level. The majority of CABx are not run by volunteers they employ staff as well and use the excellent services of the volunteers to deliver advice and help keep the "overstretched" service going.

Citizens Advice, on the other hand is a campaigning organisation linking to the bureaux and using the grass roots data to gather information and deal with emerging trends . It employs most of the staff in the London office and whilst there may be volunteers helping, it is predominantly an employer of people versed in matters of social policy. There is no doubting that Consumer Focus has done some excellent work but to assume that Citizens Advice cannot take on that role is not understanding the nature of the organisation. It is also overlooking some of the successful campaigns that have been run by Citizens Advice and have achieved just as good results.

Finally, the tone of the article suggests that because an organisation uses volunteers to support the service it is less professional. This is a stereotypical viewpoint that is both outdated and snobbish. I suggest that Victoria needs to contact someone at Citizens Advice Head Office to get a balanced response to this article.

Citizen's Advice is an admirable service, which over the years on my experience has be grossly overstretched, unable to deal with the flow of requests, and under-resourced.

I would agree with the writer SL that it should be under the wing of Consumer Focus, there is a synergy for that to happen to the benefit of all users.

If you want to write a balanced article about axing a quango, please don't base it on the views of someone whose job would be axed.....

I second Anonymous 1's comments as to the CAB organisation and also wonder why the interview didn't include someone from CAB.

Apart from this, Adam Scorer is really fighting for the continuance of his current job and makes no attempt to show up the efficiency (or otherwise) of Consumer Focus. Perhaps an amalgamation may be a possible course but, as a volunteer CAB adviser, I would hate to see a civil service mentality transferred to CAB.

Consumer Focus going? Oh dear! They will have to wake up now

Adam Scorer, director of external communications, why do you not charge customers for the help you provide? If you were to help me save £100 or £10,000. I would be only to happy to pay your organisation a %. More to the point the organisations you task should be charged on behalf of the consumer you represent for getting it wrong or (trying it on?) The double edge would serve as a self policing watchdog. Large organisations are only to happy to make a margin on the people that either don't understand or assume they have got it wrong.