Citizen Advice

It is now over a year since the start of the first Covid-19 lockdown. How have we at Citizens Advice been able to continue to help people – and how are we planning to carry on?

Our main way of providing advice used to be via drop-in sessions at our three offices in Epping, Loughton, and Waltham Abbey, and at a number of outreach locations provided by other organisations. When the first lockdown started we had to close our offices and suspend our outreach sessions but we were able to move quickly to provide a service based on the telephone.

All our staff and volunteers are now working from home. In the past year we, together with colleagues from other local Citizens Advice offices providing telephone-based services, have helped nearly 2000 people from the Epping Forest District. That figure includes at least 89 people from North Weald. We have given advice on all our usual range of subjects, including benefits, debt, employment, and housing. We continued to help with negotiations with creditors and government departments, with appeals against decisions, with drafting letters, and with form-filling. In short, we have managed to maintain all our previous services.

At first things were surprisingly quiet but the workload has picked up over the year. Covid has created some new issues but much of our work has actually continued to be along the same lines as before. Not being able to see people face to face has created some problems, particularly where a client needs advice on some letter or other document they have received, perhaps from a government department or a creditor. We have got round this this by arranging for the client to send or take the document to our Epping office at 50A Hemnall Street, from where an adviser or staff member can pick it up. Some clients are able to deal with the problem by emailing a scanned copy of the document to an email address we provide to them. (We don’t have the capacity to routinely provide advice by email.)

So if you need advice or help don’t be deterred by the fact that it is telephone-based. We can find a way round any problems that poses.

For the future, as lockdown eases we will be reviewing how we can provide a service safely, though it is likely to remain telephonebased. We now have a new number for you to call: 0808 278 7855. Calls to this new number are free. The telephone service is available from 9.30 to 2.30, Tuesday to Thursday but we can arrange telephone appointments at other times.

`If all our advisers are busy when you call you will be connected to an adviser elsewhere in the country, and if they can’t deal with the matter they will arrange for one of our staff or volunteers to phone you back.

As well as offering advice and assistance we can refer you to other free services such as foodbanks and specialist charities, and we can also arrange free advice sessions, again over the phone, with specialist housing law and family law solicitors who kindly donate their time to help our clients.

As well as the local number there are also specialised national Citizens Advice free numbers you can call: 0808 223 1133 if you have a consumer issue like broken or faulty goods, or problems with energy, water or post, and 0800 144 8444 if you need help to claim Universal Credit.

Finally, you can always get advice online from our national website www.citizensadvice.org, which includes an online chat facility.

Source: P. Stockton