Citizens Advice Bureaux and Employment Disputes Interim Report

This report details interim findings from the project Citizens Advice Bureaux and Employment Disputes. It comes at a time when drastic changes are occurring to employment conditions, rights and regulation in the UK, yet at the same time funding for employment related advice is being reduced. These processes are taking place under the broader political and policy ‘austerity’
programme of the Coalition Government and are fundamentally impacting upon people’s ‘access to justice’. The project is funded by the European Research Council and is part of a broader programme of study into third sector advice agencies and public conceptualisations of legal issues.The aim of the project is to examine how CAB clients pursue their employment disputes following their first interaction with the CAB and explores barriers to justice. Three specific questions are addressed: how the relationship between the CAB and their client shapes the approach to the employment disputes; how the different levels of support that are offered by CABx affect how clients identify, assert and defend their rights; and how advice work carried out across CABx enable the organisation and individual bureaux to campaign for social policy change in the field of workers’ rights.