About Our Charity
Citizens Advice South Gloucestershire is as an independent charity for the community of South Gloucestershire.
We provide free, impartial advice to anyone in the county that needs it through a team of volunteers by face to face drop-in sessions, appointments and telephone.
In 2022/23, we helped 5,900 people to manage 16,500 issues. Additionally, we helped people of all ages from 16 up to 94!
About the advice we provide
We have been able to provide face-to-face advice as drop-ins across the county. Sessions are available in Yate, Bradley Stoke, Cadbury Heath, Thornbury, Emersons Green and Stoke Gifford across each day of the week. Local volunteer advisors man our telephone advice line too. It is available every weekday from 9-5pm. And when we are not able to cover the lines, the calls are diverted to the national Citizens Advice switchboard.
The needs of our county are often represented as issues on debt, employment and housing. But we’re happy to help anyone regardless of the issue. We may need to refer cases onto our trusted partners where needed – for example, for specialist legal advice.
Leading the way
We are one of the smallest Citizens Advice networks across the country but we have a big impact. As well as providing face-to-face and telephone guidance locally, we’re leading the South West ‘Help to Claim’ service which supports people to make their first Universal Credit claim. We also provide specialist energy advice and can help with Personal Independent Payment (PIP) forms and appeals. Click here to find out more about the local impact we’re having in the community.
Increasing demand
The demand for our services is enormous. Not only are the number of clients increasing but the number of presenting issues that each client has is increasing. Problems are getting more complex and so we continue to refine our service to ensure that as many people as possible can access initial face-to-face support. We try to not turn anyone away which is why we triage cases to ensure that urgent issues can get dealt with quickly.
Specialist care
We’ve also refined our training process so that each of our volunteers receive specialist training on the job. They are constantly receiving hands on experience when dealing with a range of clients. The majority of client issues in South Gloucestershire need specialist benefits, money and debt advice and in addition, we provide specialist training for both of these strands.
About our partnerships
We lead the local consortium ‘South Gloucestershire Advice Services’ delivering an Information, Advice and Guidance contract on behalf of South Gloucestershire Council. Our partners are AgeUk South Gloucestershire, Bristol Law Centre, North Bristol Advice Centre and Talking Money. Through these partnerships, we give you the best service we can and are able to refer your case seamlessly if you need specialist help that we can’t provide.
Our legacy
That’s where we need your help. We have the vision and drive to keep serving South Gloucestershire for the long term. Click here to find out how you might help us leave that long term legacy by giving a gift in your will today, or email for more details at katie.collier@southgloscab.org.uk.
Our governance
We are a registered charity (number: 1037480) while our work is overseen by a Trustee board, 21 paid staff to provide management and specialist supervisory and project roles and over 20 volunteers across the county.
