Who to do a DRO with.

spaniels_rule

Hi

Who are the best to do a DRO order with please?... as in Citizens Advice, Step Change etc.

Thanks In Advance

iceblink

Depends how you'd like to do it.

If you prefer to meet an advisor face to face and have a sit down and talk things through then Citizen's Advice. If you prefer an internet/phone route then StepChange would be a good choice.

My personal preference was the internet/phone route so I went with StepChange, and I have found them to be really good so far. I've also heard good things about National Debtline.

fatbelly

spaniels_rule wrote: »

Hi

Who are the best to do a DRO order with please?... as in Citizens Advice, Step Change etc.

Thanks In Advance

Those are the main two organisations.

On the last figures I saw, Citizens Advice did 53%, Step Change 18%. There shouldn't be any difference in quality

wba31

There are some CABs that will not complete a DRO, I have been advised of clients that tried to go to CAB for a DRO and got put on to the phone to NDL or StepChange, despite needed face to face support

fatbelly

wba31 wrote: »

There are some CABs that will not complete a DRO, I have been advised of clients that tried to go to CAB for a DRO and got put on to the phone to NDL or StepChange, despite needed face to face support

If people phone adviceline and no-one picks up in time (which happens around 80% of the time) there is an option to 'press X' if you have a debt problem'. This routes them to National Debtline, who I believe answer as if they were CAB, hence much confusion.

National debtline

Since 2012, we have been working on several projects to enable us to manage demand better and meet the need for telephone debt advice. We have been working closely with National Debtline throughout this time, at peak times sending clients who cannot be helped on Adviceline to their service. Since 2014, with funding and support from the Money Advice Service, we developed the project so that National Debtline were answering calls as Citizens Advice to improve the customer experience.

... over the next few months we are going to be trialling using a specific telephone number for clients looking at debt pages on Adviceguide. The number will route calls straight through to National Debtline, who will be continuing to answer calls as Citizens Advice.

There are usually other ways to get into the CAB service - drop-ins, email, text or letter or a referral from another agency.

There'll be details here

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/how-we-provide-advice/advice/

It also may be the case that some offices do not have DRO intermediaries. The loss of LSC funding 3 years ago was a big blow, but I think there are still over 1000 intermediaries trying to cover around 3500 offices.

To help with this the CAB have confusingly started their own DRO Unit in Durham (not to be confused with the real DRO Unit in Plymouth):

DRO unit

After a very successful DRO unit pilot in Citizens Advice Manchester over the last few months, we bid to MAS to fund a larger unit. Our new DRO unit opened in February 2015, based in County Durham. This will process around 5000 DROs each year, freeing up capacity for frontline advisers. This has been very successful so far, with great take up from advisers. At the moment, this service is only available to MAS funded advisers to refer into. We are working on finding ways to expand this to the whole of Citizens Advice and will update on progress as soon as possible.