benefits advice

This is an urban story but the impact of benefits advice services is huge in the countryside. I remember for example in the pr-unitary days looking at the impact on Looe as a town of the Caradon Benefits Campaign – which increased local spending by ensuring pensioners claimed all their entitlements. The story which has clear rural parallels tells us:

Every day throughout the UK people call or walk through the doors of a Citizens Advice bureau (CAB) seeking help with all manner of concerns, from welfare reforms, benefits cuts and sanctions, to rent arrears, debt and other financial problems. They are places where people – more than 2.5 million in 2014 alone – can seek impartial, informed and trusted advice, be it on an everyday consumer matter or something more serious.

Citizens Advice is frequently a lifeline for people whose problems appear to be spiralling out of control. So if a service that caters for more than 10,000 citizens a year – many of whom are extremely vulnerable – reports that it is at risk of imminent closure after 76 years because the council is obliterating its core funding, we should pay attention. This is the situation the Newcastle branch has found itself in. Shona Alexander, chief executive of the Newcastle bureau, went public when it became clear that on top of a 20% cut in vital council funding from 2011, a further 60% reduction has been scheduled for 2016-17 and 100% (£260,000) for 2017-18 . Having looked at the council’s proposals, the charity’s board explained that the service would be untenable without this bedrock cash.

What’s at stake in Newcastle is the closure of a local service that appears to provide exceptional value for money and performs essential preventative work that eases pressure on, and saves cash for, statutory services in the long run. Newcastle city council is between a rock and a hard place: it has to slash £100m from its budget over the next three years. That’s an incredible amount of money, especially coming on top of the £191m it has had to cut since 2010. A council spokeswoman said the council was still consulting on budget proposals and that while it has “sought to protect funding” for the CAB service so far, “unfortunately government cuts are so severe that we are having to consider reducing funding in 2016-17”. She added that the hope was for the branch to “continue at least some of its invaluable work” while seeking alternative funding.