Consumers get new Voice

A new consumer body, Consumer Voice, will be set up to deal with postal services, energy companies and general consumer issues.

Consumer Voice will campaign on behalf of consumers to businesses and government, and it will also be responsible for dealing with complaints about post and energy services.

At the moment, there are three bodies covering those areas – the National Consumer Council, Postwatch, and Energywatch. The Government has announced that the three are to be subsumed into a single council, to be called Consumer Voice.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) held a public consultation in 2004 to figure out how best to represent consumers. It decided to set up Consumer Direct, a single point of contact for all consumers, which began operating in 2004, and to set up a new body to represent consumers' interests.

Now that its areas of influence have been set out, the new body will take effect within two years, the Government said.