Public Service Reform

CAB advice is Public Service Reform in action

by David Hilferty, CAS Director of Impact.

This article was first published in The Times on 4th September 2026.

“It feels like we are the back-stop for failure everywhere else."

That’s what one CAB colleague told me recently. And it is repeated in almost every interaction with our advisers, embedded in 300 locations in every corner of Scotland.  

In this context, the Scottish Government's commitment to public service reform is essential.

Simplifying and decluttering is a clear refrain throughout the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government – and it is a welcome one.
 
Every time I speak to colleagues in the Citizens Advice network in Scotland, the story is the same: of systems and services that must be designed around people’s lives, and not expect  people to navigate complex and tangled webs. 

Yet it is also a story of everything that is good in society. Of joined-up, frontline essential services. Of local empowerment. Of preventing harm from escalating further. And perhaps most importantly, of giving people hope.  

A colleague recently told me of someone who arrived at their local CAB amid a mental health crisis. She was unable to access a GP appointment – the GP practice had locum cover only, and had advised her to attend A&E twenty miles away. But she couldn't drive, and public transport was patchy.  

So the CAB adviser drove her to the hospital. And then waited with her.  

A few weeks later, she returned to the CAB with a thank-you card. She was doing much better. That support had changed her life.  

Health. Transport. Social services. All essentials that all of us need. All, in this instance, failing those who most need them.  

That adviser’s response was an example of going above and beyond. Of looking at a person’s whole set of circumstances – and recognising that few problems in any of our lives exist in neat and compartmentalised isolation.  

Frontline essential services like ours are increasingly the last refuge for people who are out of options after rebounding around dead-end helplines and closed doors.