Oxford Citizens Advice Bureau
Annual Review 2014
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Oxford Citizens Advice Bureau
Annual Review 2014
Introduction
For many of our clients and advisers this year has been dominated by continuing
economic challenges. Problems with debt, money, employment and housing have
remained high on our agenda, together with ongoing efforts to help people get the
support to which they are entitled.
Oxford CAB worked with 6,500 clients in 2013-14 to help them find a way forward,
whether that involved building the skills and confidence they need to manage their
financial affairs, finding the best solution to unmanageable levels of debt, checking
that people with disabilities are able to claim the financial support they need or
making sure that employers respect their legal and contractual obligations to their
employees.
We also bring people together to make best use of scarce resources and work on
making it as easy as possible for people to get advice when they need it, in the way
that they want. We are pleased to have secured funding from BIG for two years for a
broad partnership of advice agencies in the city, with the aim of creating a stronger
network of advice organisations for the future.
One of the great strengths of the Citizens Advice service is that we bring together a
vast store of experience and evidence that can be used to tackle the issues that lie
behind so much individual distress. Our Consumer Empowerment Partnership
helped secure much needed improvement in the regulation of payday lending and
will soon be working to try and get better energy tariffs for people on prepayment
meters.
I would like to take this opportunity once again to thank all those who have played a
part in the work of the bureau over the last 12 months: our committed team of staff
and volunteers; the wide range of funders who have enabled us to make a real
difference in the lives of so many clients; and all members of the board of trustees. If
after reading this report you would like to know more, or perhaps support our work in
some way, please do get in touch.
Jeremy Irwin Singer
Chair of Board of Trustees
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Aims
Oxford Citizens Advice Bureau is a local independent registered charity offering free,
impartial, independent and confidential advice. We are part of a national network of
bureaux which together make up the Citizens Advice service.
The aims of the Citizens Advice service are:
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to provide the advice people need for the problems they face
to improve the policies and practices that affect people’s lives.
Oxford CAB helps people in many different ways. Individual problems are dealt with
through face to face advice, and on the telephone. We campaign locally and
nationally for improvements to services and to the law. By using the evidence we
collect from the experiences of the clients we help, we can make a difference for
people who may never even visit a CAB.
In the last year Oxford CAB helped over 6,500 people with 20,000 problems.
But we’re not just here for times of crisis – we also use clients’ stories to
campaign for policy changes that benefit everyone.
97% of people in England have heard of the Citizens Advice Service and 41% say
they have used a CAB at some point in their lives. The Citizens Advice Service is
rated 1st of 22 national charities on being helpful, approachable, professional,
informative, effective, reputable and accountable.
What do we do?
Oxford Citizens Advice Bureau is an independent local organisation providing free,
confidential and impartial advice for the people of Oxford and the surrounding travel
to work area. Oxford CAB can give information and advice on almost any subject you
can think of. Our volunteer advisers are trained to deal with queries relating to debt,
welfare benefits, employment, housing, consumer issues, family and personal issues
and nationality and immigration. The breadth of this knowledge means that we can
take a rounded view of the problems people face and make sure that all the different
aspects are covered. Often one significant change in our lives can trigger a whole
raft of problems: for example, losing a job can lead to the loss of a home, breakdown
of a relationship and problems with debt; being ill can mean complicated benefit
applications and anxiety about employment and bills. Oxford CAB supported over
6,500 clients through these sorts of situations in 2013/14.
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How the service works
When people come to us for advice we give them a short diagnostic interview – our
Gateway process. We gather brief details of the enquiry, assess the complexity and
urgency of the issue and also how best to deal with it. We might provide information
to help someone take the first steps to resolve the issue for themselves. We might
make an appointment with one of our generalist advisers or our specialist
caseworkers. Or we can make an appointment with one of the team of solicitors who
give time for free to help clients with issues ranging from family law and wills and
probate to personal injury and contract issues. If we think the best option for the
client is to see another organisation better able to help with their query we’ll make
sure they are pointed in the right direction for the advice they need. The Gateway
interview helps us assess clients in greatest need, ensure clients are seen as quickly
as possible and provide best value for money for funders.
We could not sustain this level of service delivery without the support and
commitment of our very talented volunteers. They contribute to the bureau’s
achievements in all areas, working as advisers, keeping up with the demands of
book keeping and administration, staffing our busy reception and serving as trustees.
The monetary value of their volunteering effort is over £300,000 per year. Their work
is essential and this report is an opportunity publicly to say thank you for their
dedication.
External environment
This year’s report is written against a backdrop of ongoing substantial pressures on
both household incomes and public sector funding. Oxford City Council’s recently
published financial inclusion strategy points out that rising costs of living in relation to
basic needs such as home energy and food, together with increased housing
costs, are exacerbating the problems of vulnerable residents. At the same time
others currently at the ‘tipping point’ are being pushed into potential difficulties. There
is an increased danger of people falling into debt, getting into rent arrears, failing to
adequately heat their homes or feed themselves and their family properly. It is
estimated that by 2015, 15,000 households affected by welfare reform across the
city will be on average £30 a week worse off. People with disabilities, lone parents
and those living in the private rented sector will be worst affected. The Citizens
Advice service is on the front line as people look for help in dealing with reduced
income, uncertain housing, loss of employment and lack of access to previously
available statutory support.
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Working in partnership
In the face of such pressures it is more important than ever that we are able to forge
strong and supportive partnerships with other relevant organisations in order to
maximise the impact of our shared resources for the benefit of clients. So we were
delighted to be successful in leading a partnership bid for funding from the BIG
Lottery Advice Services Transition Fund. Our partnership builds on the excellent
foundations laid by the Oxford Advice Forum and brings together a group of ten
advice agencies across Oxford. Oxford Advice Agencies – Stronger Together
includes Oxford CAB, Agnes Smith Advice Centre, Barton Advice Centre,
Oxfordshire Welfare Rights, Rose Hill and Donnington Advice Centre, Asylum
Welcome, Refugee Resource, Shelter, Age UK Oxfordshire and Oxfordshire Mind.
Together, over the two years of the project, we are exploring ways of increasing
access to advice and developing new sources of income for advice services.
In the first six months of the partnership, from October 2013 to March 2014 we have
mapped advice services across the city, developed a new website
(www.adviceoxford.org.uk ) to help clients find their way to the right agency first time
or get help for themselves from other on-line information and supported two partners
to upgrade their client management systems. We have also submitted several
funding bids as partners.
We have been grateful over the past year for continued support from Oxford City
Council as one of our key funders. Their commitment to maintaining funding for the
advice sector in recognition of the preventative benefits of timely and accurate
advice is commendable. The bureau has worked hard to strengthen this relationship
and to build stronger working relationships with other voluntary organisations in
Oxford for the benefit of clients.
With the third year of our three year grant award from John Paul Getty Charitable
Trust we have been able to continue our longstanding partnership with HMP
Springhill under which prisoners who have reached the point in their sentence when
they are assessed as ready for community service can volunteer to work in the
bureau. There is a rigorous selection process and then a period of intensive training.
Depending on their skills, abilities and length of time with us, over the last year more
than a dozen Springhill volunteers have supported the work of the bureau in a wide
range of roles, helping on reception and gathering initial information from clients.
In addition thanks to JP Getty and HMP Bullingdon we have completed the second
year of our project providing money advice to prisoners at HMP Bullingdon. A full
time caseworker spends two days a week at the prison helping offenders to identify
and manage their debts, prevent debts escalating during sentences wherever
possible, and working to make sure that levels of debt are as low as possible when
prisoners leave custody. Over the second year of the project, the caseworker has
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seen 290 clients and advised on over £2 million of problem debt. We have also
extended the service to offer information to visiting families and been able to recruit a
peer adviser from within the prison to help with straightforward signposting and
information. This is an important contribution to the reduction of re-offending agenda.
Our financial inclusion project for older people in Oxford started in August.2013
and is funded for two years by Lloyds TSB Foundations. Their grant has meant that
we could train and supervise a team of volunteers who are now working with older
people to improve benefit take up, and connect them to other services across the
city. With the Lloyds funding as a base we were able to secure some additional
funding from Oxford City Council from a budget set aside to tackle isolation amongst
older people. This three way partnership gave us a third more capacity so that in the
2013/14 financial year we have been able to help 330 clients over 60. About 160 of
those helped were over 80 years old. Each client has received a benefits check, and
for the majority we have also reviewed their potential entitlement to help with fuel
bills. Additional income totaling £680,000 had been secured for 89 clients as at 31
March 2014 and further awards were still being confirmed.
Financial capability volunteers have worked with young parents, drug and alcohol
agencies, homeless men about to take up their first tenancy, prisoners and probation
staff to build confidence and skills in managing personal finance. Thanks to funding
from OFGEM we were also able to offer group sessions to help with getting the best
deal from energy suppliers and look at other ways of reducing energy bills. Later in
the year we extended this service to one to one advice for clients with energy debts.
Personal budgeting support has also been available to tenants affected by potential
reductions in housing benefit as a result of under occupancy of social housing. So far
the greater need seems to have been for debt advice in the first instance and this is
being dealt with through referrals to our part-time debt advice worker funded
separately by Oxford City Council from their prevention of homelessness budget. In
2013/14, thanks to funding from Oxford City Council for this post we were able to
take about 150 referrals from the city’s rents team, housing options team and
homelessness staff as well as from our own drop-in service. The service helped 95%
of these clients to maintain their housing, whether through sorting out payment
arrangements with landlords, halting eviction proceedings or helping people gain
control of their finances for the future.
Our Oxfordshire Consumer Empowerment partnership has continued to reach
around 70 organisations, from advice agencies (including CABs) to housing
associations and Victim Support, as well as Trading Standards.
David Soward, the project manager, appears regularly on BBC Radio Oxford with
Kate Davies from Trading Standards on a consumer phone-in and we have had both
local and national guests being interviewed on the show. We have a permanent
presence on social media and the TV screens in the bureau waiting area and in the
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council offices. We have also, with the help of our student volunteers and social
policy coordinator, spread consumer messages in local shopping areas and the
lobby of Oxford central library. Trading Standards produced some eye-catching
Scamnesty boxes to raise awareness in Scams Month and we helped to get these
into CAB waiting rooms and libraries across Oxfordshire. Other topics and
campaigns this year included key messages around purchase of used cars and a
concerted effort to persuade the FCA to improve the regulation of pay day lenders.
We appreciated ongoing support from Oxford City Council which enabled us to
sustain our complement of committed and expert volunteers and also continue to
provide an outreach service to 9 GP surgeries around the city. As well as offering a
drop in service Monday to Friday in our busy city centre office in St Aldates we also
ran outreach sessions at Elms Road, and the Slade Children's Centres.
Other specialist projects
Our specialist projects have continued to provide a service to clients with particular
needs. Our team of Macmillan benefits funded caseworkers based at the
Maggie’s Centre at the Churchill hospital are raising nearly £2 million each year to
support clients with a cancer diagnosis.
Benefits in practice tackles health inequalities by taking support to those least likely
to find their way to our offices or make that call through a series of outreach sessions
in GP surgeries around the city.
Who have we helped?
In the year to 31 March 2014 Oxford CAB has helped 6,500 clients
We know that at least 1800 of those clients had some form of disability or long term
health condition
Roughly 1 in 4 were unemployed
Our clients reflect the diversity of the community we serve - 50% describe their
ethnic origin as other than White British and a significant proportion have English as
a second language
The income profile of clients helped at Oxford CAB remains weighted towards those
with least financial resource. A sample of 2033 clients gave information about their
income levels. Of these 60% had incomes under £1,000 per month and 80%
incomes under £1,500 per month. These figures are about the same as the
corresponding figures for the previous financial year.
Volunteers in the bureau helped clients deal with over 20,000 issues.
As usual the top four categories of advice requested were benefits, debt,
employment and housing
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Financial summary
The bureau made a small unrestricted surplus of just under £18,000 for the financial
year ended 31 March 2014. The balance of the surplus is restricted funds carried
forward to the next year. A full set of accounts which have been subject to
independent audit is available on request.
2013 - 2014
£
INCOME
Voluntary income
Investment income
Income from charitable activities
Other incoming resources
TOTAL
EXPENDITURE
Charitable activities
Governance costs
TOTAL
Surplus for the year (restricted 24214 and
unrestricted 17703)
208917
351
367986
3075
580329
527329
11083
538412
41917
Thanks to all our funders
We are very grateful to all our funders:
Councillors John Tanner, Susana Pressel and Anne Marie Canning
Citizens Advice (making grants from BIS and Energy Best Deal)
Elms Road Children’s Centre
Friends of Oxford CAB
Feoffees of St Michael and All Saints Charities
HDH Wills 1965 Charitable Trust
HMRC
HMP Bullingdon Prison
J Paul Getty Charitable Trust
Lloyds TSB Foundation
Money Advice Trust
Oxfam
Oxford City Council
Oxfordshire County Council
Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust
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Macmillan Cancer Support
Nationwide Building Society
Slade Children’s Centre
St Aldates Parochial Charity
Warm Homes Healthy People
Thanks to all our partners
Agnes Smith Advice Centre
Rose Hill and Donnington Advice Centre
OCWA
The Oxford legal community who help with our pro bono Wednesday surgery
HMP Springhill
Age UK Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire Mind
Refugee Resource
Asylum Welcome
Shelter
How to contact us
Main bureau and office:
95 St Aldates, Oxford, OX1 1DA
Telephone advice line: 08444 111 444
www.caox.org.uk
www.adviceguide.org.uk
Drop in advice
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
10.00 am – 1.00 pm
10.00 am – 1.00 pm
10.00 am – 1.00 pm
10.00 am – 4.30 pm
10.00 am – 1.00 pm
Telephone
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
10.00 am – 4.00 pm
10.00 am – 4.00 pm
10.00 am – 4.00 pm
10.00 am – 4.00 pm
10.00 am – 4.00 pm
Charity registration number 1063068
Company registration number 3330267
FRN number 617691
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