Client’s Behaviour Notice

We understand your situation could be stressful and you might be frustrated – but our staff have the right to do their jobs without being treated badly. We will not tolerate abusive behaviour and our members of staff and volunteers have the right to protect themselves from personal abuse, threats, or intimidation. Members of staff  and volunteers will always do their best to assist, but if a caller behaves in a rude, offensive, abusive, or intimidating manner they have the right to end to appointment or terminate the call.

We won’t accept aggressive behaviour while helping you, for example:

• swearing

• abusive language

• discrimination like racism, sexism, or homophobia

• being violent or threatening violence.

We’ll also tell you if you’re taking up an unfair amount of time as this could stop us helping other people. For example, if you:

• keep demanding things in a short amount of time.

• ask to speak to a specific member of staff or volunteer when it’s not possible or contact lots of staff or volunteer to try and get a different outcome.

• keep changing issues or raising unrelated ones.

• demand help for something outside our advice areas

• keep raising the same issue when we’ve already helped you or we can’t help more.

• ask for sensitive or confidential information we aren’t allowed to share.

• make lots of complaints without giving us the chance to resolve them or make an unreasonable number of data protection rights requests.

What we’ll do if your behaviour is unacceptable.

We’ll give you a chance to change your behaviour, but if you continue we might:

• end the conversation.

• limit how much time we spend on the phone with you.

• stop helping you face to face and only help you by phone and email.

• not reply to all your communications

• send letters and documents back to you.

• only help you with certain issues.

In very serious situations we might:

• stop helping you completely.

• call the police.

If we decide to stop helping you

If we decide to stop helping you it means you can’t access Citizens Advice services – so we might not respond to any contact from you.

We’ll give you a chance to change your behaviour before we stop helping you – unless your behaviour threatens the safety of our staff or other people.

We’ll always try to tell you why we’ve stopped helping you.

If you think our decision is unfair

If your local Citizens Advice decides to stop helping you, you can appeal to the chair of your local Citizens Advice. Find the contact details for your local Citizens Advice Here.

If the national organisation decides to stop helping you, you can appeal to the Citizens Advice Client Services team Here.