Consumer Energy Specialist

Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS), our 61 member Citizen Advice Bureaux (CAB), the Citizen Advice consumer service, and the Extra Help Unit, form Scotland’s largest independent advice network. Advice provided by our service is free, independent, confidential, impartial and available to everyone. We are champions for both citizens and consumers and in 2013/14 the Citizens Advice Service in Scotland helped over 330,000 clients in Scotland deal with over one million issues overall.

The Consumer Futures Unit (CFU) is responsible for fulfilling consumer advocacy duties in the regulated industries of energy, post and water. 

An expert in the energy field is required on a short term contract for services, to provide support to the CFU Energy Team.  The successful contractor should have a detailed knowledge of Scottish consumer energy issues in order to provide expert advice and guidance to the CAS CF team during an intense period of high work volume.

In order to fulfil this contract, the individual must have the following:

• An understanding of Scottish and UK energy markets and issues;
• An appreciation of the approach of Citizens Advice (England and Wales) and CAS to energy consumer issues;
• An understanding of the broad range of particular Scottish energy issues including DTS restricted meters, energy efficiency, fuel poverty, and off-gas consumers;
• Experience of writing SORs and monitoring and evaluating research that draw out the consumer context in technical energy areas.

The role of this contract will be to provide expertise on the areas set out above, as well as areas such as the policy landscape in the context of the CMA investigation, the Scottish government energy strategy, the fuel poverty target and SEEP.

It is anticipated that there will be a requirement for around 20 days’ work over a 3 month period.  Attendance at the CAS office in Edinburgh will normally be required one day per week, with other requirements fulfilled remotely.