From cold-calling and energy-switching to scams and payday loans, Oxfordshire’s Consumer Empowerment Partnership works to raise awareness of issues like these across the county.

The partnership is a network of consumer and support groups, advice agencies, housing associations, and trading standards working together to give advice and campaign about all consumer issues.

It provides local leadership in consumer protection and empowerment to ensure that people can get advice and information; access education programmes; report and hear about scams, rogue traders and local issues; and that they can participate in activities to tackle these issues.

There is a new emphasis on education work and the team is now looking to work with older people, groups of tenants, children’s centres and schools, so they can hold short talks about consumer rights, buying and selling, things to watch out for, and more.

Oxfordshire’s Consumer Empowerment Partnership is run by Citizens Advice Oxfordshire, based at Oxford CAB and was launched one year ago.

David Soward, who is managing Oxfordshire’s Consumer Partnership project, said: “Citizens Advice nationally took over the role of promoting consumer education in April this year from the Office of Fair Trading. In Oxfordshire, we hold a regular forum attended by our many different partners which focuses on a different hot topic each time such as payday loans.

“We want to promote simple messages such as the recent ‘Spot Scams! Stop Scams!’ campaign. In short, we want to empower consumers to stand up for their rights and avoid some of the pitfalls of ‘too good to be true’ offers. “We’re talking to some of Oxfordshire’s frontline charities, housing associations and to Oxford Credit Union to make sure our messages reach people who could be the target of scams or payday lenders.

“And we’re linking with Oxfordshire CAB’s existing and well-established financial capability trainers and a newer project which is about ensuring older people get the financial support to which they are entitled.

“Our focus is finding out what the most urgent areas are to concentrate on such as mobility and other aids for older people and their carers, computer scams, second-hand cars, cutting fuel bills. But in order to do this effectively, the consumer partnership is looking for consumer project volunteers to help spread vital messages using ready-made materials from the national CAB website.”

If you would like to help, please contact davidCEP@cab-oxford.org.uk or tweet @OxfordConsumer.