Citizens Advice Bucks Winter Poverty Appeal

Happy new year!! Thanks so much for staying with us, we have raised nearly £6,000 now, thanks to your amazing support, can you help us inch our way towards our £10,000 target?

We helped so many people in the last 12 months thanks to your donations with our financial and debt advice, so we just wanted to share a bit about how many people we helped with different types of problems now the results are in!

Benefits & Tax Credits, we helped : 6,840 people to apply or appeal for benefits to be reviewed.

• Personal Independence Payment claims and issues: 1,989
• Helping people claim Council tax reduction: 787
• Helping people with their Employment Support Allowance: 573
• Helping people apply for or appeal Housing Benefit: 563
• Helping people Attendance Allowance (for carers support): 438

Universal Credit (benefit advice and appeals): 5,188

Debt advice: 3,595

• Helping people resolve Council Tax Arrears: 406
• Helping people resolve Rent arrears (Housing Association): 319
• Fuel debts we have helped to resolve: 264
• Debt Relief Orders arranged: 243

Housing: 2,873  helped, from tenancy and landlord issues, to noisy neighbours, to being at risk of losing their homes.

Foodbank vouchers:  848 issued to 345 clients (worth £39,514), including 76 clients receiving vouchers in the 3 weeks the service was open in December.

We helped local people to apply for over £1.65m in income gains, including benefit awards, increases and back payments.

53% of our debt clients are disabled or have a long-term health condition. 

There is still 12,000 calls we couldn't answer this year because we didn't have enough funding. Can you help our hero volunteers help our community?

It's the last seven days of the campaign- one tiny step you could do is just encourage friends and family to donate by sharing the link- www.crowdfunder.co.uk/cabucks and a little reason why you chose to donate! Did you know, personal recommendations as to why you choose a charity on a share increase donations by 10%! A little fundraising magic, all in just a little sentence.

I wanted to share with you some people we helped with your funding!

Kofi struggled thanks to Covid, but now he's stayed on his feet thanks to a grant following his work drying up during COVID.

Kofi is self-employed in construction, earning an average income and living debt-free with his wife and two children. As they are not from the EU they have no recourse to public funds, despite residing in Britain for 15 years.  When Covid-19 hit, Kofi’s work dried up and he was left with no money coming in and no eligibility to claim for it. They were relying on his wife’s part-time earnings as a Health Care Assistant, which did not cover the rent, food or bills.

Citizens Advice applied for a Covid grant from a local charity to help Kofi and his family cover rent while he had no income, which was accepted. They also contacted Bucks Council social care to apply for financial assistance for the children and succeeded in gaining free school meal vouchers to ensure the children did not go without.

Kofi is now back at work and has got through so far without getting into debt or rent arrears. 

“Citizens Advice Bucks has been the only organisation that’s given me the time of day and made any sense to me – thank you”

Terry lost his sight, his job, but never lost hope thanks to the support of Citizens Advice volunteers.

Terry was a well-loved school caretaker in Bucks. In March 2020, he had no income as his sight loss meant he could no longer work.

Lockdown was a difficult time, but for Terry – who lives on his own – it was even more challenging. He came to us for help with a Personal Independence Payment claim. With all of our advisers working remotely in line with COVID-19 guidelines, we liaised with Terry over the phone and on email. He often posted documents to the office which were scanned and added to his file for advisers to access and progress his case. 

As a result, we secured the highest rate of benefit without him having to travel to a medical appointment in lockdown. We also achieved the maximum reduction in council tax.  Aside from financial outcomes, we also organised Terry’s food shopping to his home during lockdown.  

“Thank you all so much for helping me sort this out, you will never know how much you have positively impacted my life for the better.  You are an incredible team.”

A very special thank you to each and every one of you for your enormous support throughout the campaign.

We are very lucky to have such a supportive community to help us on our journey to helping more of our hero volunteers help more people across Buckinghamshire.

Yours truly,

Anna Day, Head of Development and Communications at Citizens Advice and our army of wonderful volunteers and staff.