It’s never a dull year at Citizens Advice. Our Annual Report for 2021 shows that we’ve had one of the most eventful years ever.
Find out what differences we’ve made for residents, businesses and communities across the region.
Read the annual report 2021
Key highlights from our annual report
Tackling the cost-of-living crisis
When Covid-19 first hit, we knew that eventually, there was going to be a financial cost that would impact residents. Now, in 2022, as energy and fuel prices have gone up, we’re seeing an increase in other areas. Inevitably, this will squeeze people’s wallets and push many into debt.
However, we planned ahead. With help from St John’s Foundation, we trained 4 full-time debt caseworkers to help those who are in financial turmoil.
Kickstarting advice calls
With so many people experiencing difficulty it’s essential that we are able to answer more advice requests. So, using the government’s Kickstart scheme, we trained up 3 new advisers to answer calls.
This has been so successful that we’re training up another group of Kickstart advisers. We also took on 2 Kickstarters to help with our Business Development and Marketing enabling us to ramp up activities in this area.
Launched a new website
We’d had the same website for years. It was slow and difficult to use. In 2021, thanks to funding from WECA, we were able to launch a website. It’s faster, easier to use and caters for many different types of users.
Black History month
Our charity aims to create a fairer more equal society. So, promoting minority groups is really important to us.
In October, we held a Black History dance tutorial our book club read Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race. We also published articles about cultural aspects of Black History and hosted a talk by human rights activist and BLM speaker Natasha March.
