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The National Asylum Support Service is "a shambles", according to citizens advice bureaux, which claim to be supporting the dispersed asylum seekers Nass was set up two years ago to serve.

A report published last week by the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux (Nacab) says Nass is "comprehensively failing both asylum-seekers and taxpayers".

Based on evidence from the day-to-day casework of CABs in England and Wales, the report describes "serious shortcomings" in Nass's performance and accessibility, warning that although recently promised reforms are welcome, the government must go much further and establish local Nass counter or "drop-in" services.

CABs in asylum dispersal areas and elsewhere have dealt with increasing numbers of advice enquiries from Nass-supported asylum-seekers. They have helped individuals contact Nass to obtain extra support so that they can attend obligatory Home Office interviews or appeal hearings, or purchase items not allowed for by the much-derided voucher scheme. There have also been problems with Nass-provided accommodation, and with individuals allowed to stay who find themselves left in a welfare limbo between Nass and the benefits system.

In many of these cases, administrative delay and inefficiency has been compounded by process error on the part of Nass, the report claims. "But in the vast majority of such cases, CABs are called on to provide not advice as such, but a 'helping hand' in breaking down the acute inaccessibility of Nass, which has no local counter services in the dispersal areas. In effect, CABs are providing services that should be provided by Nass itself."

Despite the government's acknowledgement that Nass is not working well, and it plans to overhaul the asylum system, including abolishing vouchers and introducing reception centres, Nacab warns that the reforms are not as far-reaching as they might at first appear.

In reality, it says, it will be years before more than a small proportion of asylum-seekers can hope to find places in proposed reception centres, making it all the more essential that immediate steps are taken to put the existing system right. Nacab chief executive David Harker said: "As it stands, Nass can only be described as a shambles. It is simply unacceptable that men, women and children who have already faced some of the worst violations of human rights should suffer further."

- Process Error: CAB Clients' Experience of the National Asylum Support Service, available from www.nacab.org.uk