Agenda item

To receive a presentation from Tara Hastings on the work of Citizens Advice Surrey Heath.

Tara Hastings, Chief Executive, and Nigel Downey, Chairman, gave a presentation in respect of the work of Citizens Advice Surrey Heath.  The presentation included an overview of the organisation, a summary of the services provided and areas for development.

The Organisation provided a free, independent and confidential advice service on a wide range of issues to local residents whilst at the same time working to improve policies and practices that affected people’s lives directly.  The organisation employed eight part time paid members of staff who were in turn supported by 40 volunteers and monitored by a ten member trustee board who had been selected on the basis of the skills they could offer the organisation.  

To ensure that resources were deployed appropriately, and people approaching the service received an appropriate level of support, a triage system was used to assess the nature and complexity of a person’s problems before an appropriate course of action was developed.  Those seeking advice were increasingly presenting with multiple problems and in 2015/16, Citizens Advice Surrey Heath dealt with 4993 unique clients who presented with 15,110 problems.

The four most common reasons for approaching the organisation were to seek advice on benefits, debt, housing and employment.  Data showed that, with the exception of one subject area, the number of people seeking advice had increased across all advice areas when compared to 2014/15 data.  The exception to this was the number of people seeking advice for Council Tax arrears which had fallen by 19% to 196 people.  This fall was attributed to the Borough Council becoming more proactive about tackling Council Tax arrears at an early stage and not waiting until the situation became critical; a move that was welcomed by the organisation.

As part of work to improve the accessibility of the service, an agreement had been entered into with Citizens Advice Woking and the organisation had joined Adviceline.  This meant that Surrey Heath residents could now talk to advisors on a Friday when Surrey Heath’s office was closed, weekly outreach services were being delivered in Chobham and Bagshot and home visits were offered to those who were unable to travel.  The possibility of operating an outreach service at Frimley Park Hospital had been explored however to date this project had not got beyond initial discussions.

Analysis of the weekly outreach services had found that the Bagshot service was not as well used as it might and more needed to be done to widen awareness of the service before a decision was taken on whether the resources might be better used elsewhere in the Borough.  Councillor Hutchinson agreed to help with this task in her capacity as ward councillor for Bagshot.

Initial approaches to the Clinical Commissioning Group for funding had been unsuccessful and it was agreed that Councillor Dougan would work with the CAB to try and unlock this potential funding stream.

Some success had been had with fundraising activities and over the past four years approximately £50,000 had been raised however it was acknowledged that this was an area that could be developed further.

Whilst the organisation had a Twitter account this was currently linked to the national Citizen’s Advice Bureau website and work was taking place to link this to the local website so that more could be done to raise awareness of the services offered locally.

The Committee thanked Tara Hastings and Nigel Downey for their update.