Review of the year – our 2023 highlights
It’s been a challenging but rewarding year for Citizens Advice South Gloucestershire. Here, we recap our highlights from 2023.
2023 was charity’s busiest year on record
Adviser Mary-Anne speaking with a client
- We’ve helped 6,359 clients so far this year – meaning it is our busiest year on record, with 20% more clients than last year
- We’ve also seen many more cost-of-living related problems than we did prior to Covid – with more than 250 issues in the month of October compared to an average of less than 100 prior to the pandemic
- We continued to deliver top-quality advice despite the increasing demand – achieving a green (good) marks in the Local Performance and Quality Framework (LPQF) overseen by national Citizens Advice
Growing our team in 2023
Group photo of part of the team during Volunteers Week
- We’re very grateful to be taking on an additional six Volunteers this winter – thank you and welcome to the team one and all
- We’ve also launched new projects including When Advice Really Matters (WARM) which links with health services in the region – the Aviva-funded progamme providing remote delivery of advice and the Ingeus-funded project which provides advice to people on probation. These are going well thanks to our newly-recruited Advisers
- We’ve also grown the Help To Claim team thanks to additional funding from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
- We welcomed our new Chair of the Board of Trustees John-Paul Corry in March. J-P joins us at an exciting time as we move towards completion of our purchase of new offices at Badminton Court, Yate
Month-by-month – our calendar of 2023
Finance and Admin Manager Amanda cuts the cake at her 25-year anniversary party
January
We added a new advice session on Mondays in Yate – which has proved very popular alongside Tuesday and Friday sessions
February
Ofgem took action against forced installation of prepayment meters following campaigning from Citizens Advice – including by us locally
March
We celebrated our Finance and Admin Manager Amanda’s 25-year anniversary of working with the charity with a party at our Yate HQ
Bristol 10k runners prior to the event
April
The charity launched a new face-to-face session in Emersons Green as well as moving to a new venue for the weekly session in Thornbury. We were very grateful in April to receive an additional grant of £120,000 from South Gloucestershire Council to fund our advice services
May
Our five runners completed the Bristol 10K – raising more than £1,800 for our charity. We’re looking for runners to take part next year (2024) – as well as walkers to take part in “Ultra Challenges” for our charity. You can read more about this here
June
The charity celebrated Volunteers Week with a “thank you“ event for our Advisers featuring awards such as “best laugh”, “morning cheerleader” and “funniest Adviser”. We also welcomed national Citizens Advice CEO Clare Moriarty to our office in Yate
July
We launched our new premises fundraising appeal – having found a new home in Yate. The move will allow us to double the number of people we can help face-to-face
August
Our Volunteer Adviser John spoke about why volunteering with Citizens Advice South Gloucestershire is one of the most satisfying things he’s done. Read his thoughts here
September
We said goodbye to our Adviser Mike who volunteered with us for more than ten years. We held a leaving celebration at our office in Yate. Thank you Mike
Bath Half Marathon runner Krystal after the run
October
Our runners Krystal and Maya took on the challenge of the Bath Half Marathon – raising a brilliant £783 for our charity between the two of them. We experienced our busiest month for cost-of-living-related issues on record – at more than 250 issues recorded for the month
November
The charity unveiled our Citizens Advice South Gloucestershire Christmas Cards – which can be bought for £3.50 for a pack of ten on our website here. We shared some wonderful feedback from one of our Help To Claim clients who described our Adviser Peter as “excellent” and “ten out of ten”
December
The charity launched our Christmas Appeal – asking for donations of £20 to support our work. We were very pleased to see coverage on BBC News Online. We were very grateful to receive £35,884 from the National Lottery Community Fund to support core costs, IT and additional training
Thank you so much for your support this year – from reading our newsletters to donating to our charity, you are helping us and we appreciate it.
We are proud of what we have achieved this year and believe 2024 will be even better.
Thank you for reading from all of the team at Citizens Advice South Gloucestershire!
