To meet the ever increasing demand for our advice services, we need more space for our growing staff and volunteer teams to work from. In December 2024 we bought our first ever home - a fantastic office in Yate that is being transformed right now into our new Advice Centre, where we will help thousands of people in South Gloucestershire each year! We're fitting it out with brand new rooms to advise our face-to-face clients in, we're making an accessible toilet for clients to use and we're re-vamping the reception area to create a welcoming space for everyone.
We've already raised over £70,000 to cover the cost of these essential works and we've had a really generous furniture donation from the company CGI which has provided us with most of the office furniture we need. But there's still a few more things we need before we can move our teams over. We need to buy 5 x new desks and 16 x office chairs for our volunteers and staff to work from. We also need to replace 3 x sets of bespoke fire doors at £3,500 each to make the new place fully compliant with fire safety regulations. Without the money to fund the replacement fire doors and furniture, our planned move this summer could be significantly delayed.
Could you donate to help us get there? Your support really will make such a difference and will help us to finally open up our new Advice Centre to local people who need our help. Thank you.
Every year we give advice to thousands of local people. Whether it's an issue with benefits, energy, debt or housing - our independent, expert advisers are here to help.
Demand for our services has been growing in recent years as more people struggle to manage the higher costs of everyday essentials - things like food, rent and energy. Last year we helped more people than ever before with food bank referrals and emergency fuel vouchers.
In the last 12 months alone we've seen:
- An increase of 22% in the number of people coming to us for help
- An increase of 43% in the number of issues people are asking us to help with
- An increase from 3.5 to 4.1average issues per client. This means that cases are getting more complex to solve
We know that the advice we give really does make a difference and helps people find a way forward. Last year we saved our 8,823 clients a total of £17.6 million - that's an average of almost £2,000 for each person we helped! As well as more money in your pockets, our advice improves health too. 60% of our clients felt less stressed, depressed or anxious after our advice.