May 12 2008

Dear Mr Ribsskog

Your complaint against Liverpool Central CAB

I undertook to write to you following the Adjudicator’s report into the handling of your complaint.

We will update the complaints guidance to make it clear that a CAB should send its own acknowledgement to complainants even where the complaint has already been acknowledged by the Complaints Officer in the central office. We will also strengthen the guidance about who should handle a complaint so that the investigation is not carried out by someone themselves involved or the subject of the complaint. These changes will be included in the next update of the guidance in June.

While the correct e-mail address for contacting the bureau is given on the Citizens Advice website I am afraid that the address is still shown incorrectly on the Central Liverpool CAB website. We have asked the bureau to rectify this error but to date this has not happened. I will contact the bureau manager and chair again this week as I completely understand that it is unacceptable for a wrong e-mail address to be shown as this clearly causes problems for people who want to get in touch with a bureau.

I am not able to explain why your e-mails to David Harker and others in Central Office were not replied to. E-mail is now a standard means of formal communication and we have target response times. At the end of last year major changes were made to how the administration within the Chief Executive’s office is managed which should result in others not having the same experience as you. The Complaints Officer and I fully understand the importance of dealing with e-mails promptly and make every effort to do so even if no substantive reply will be sent. I am sorry that we failed do this last year.

Regarding the delay between your sending an e-mail and receiving an automated response, I have talked to our IT Department and we did have problems in the summer last year with e-mails not being delivered or being severely delayed and can only assume that yours to our Chief Executive was held up in this way. But as you will have seen from my immediate response to your e-mail to me earlier this year this is no longer a problem.

David Harker apologised in his letter and I can add little to this. I recognise that you are still disatissfied; however I can assure you that we are taking on board the recommendations made by the Independent Adjudicator and have carefully read the remainder of her report and your comments to her. I do hope that we would handle a complaint such as yours rather better in the future.

Yours sincerely

Sue Thomas

Head of Advice Policy and Standards