Agenda item

To undertake appropriate external scrutiny of Citizen's Advice Epping Forest District, with regard to the provision of independent advice services for residents of the Epping Forest District.

 

The Chairman was very pleased to welcome three officers from the local Citizen’s Advice - Epping Forest District. The officers were Nnenna Anyanwu, the Chief Executive; Peter Gordon a Trustee; and Jean Wells a Trustee.

 

A copy of their presentation is attached for information.

 

Ms Anyanwu reviewed the work that the Citizen’s Advice Epping Forest (CAEF) did in the district, saying that they were an independent charity that provided specialist and general advice within the EFDC area. They had 3 offices in Loughton Library, Waltham Abbey Town Hall and Hemnall Street, Epping. They also had 2 outreaches, one in Limes Farm and one in the Ongar Library.

 

They provided free, confidential, independent and impartial advice to people so that they did not suffer from lack of knowledge of their rights and responsibilities.

 

Their core areas of advice and expertise were in benefits, debt management, housing, employment, relationships, legal matters and financial services.

 

They provided advice to local residents on a face to face basis and by telephone. They also run an evening pro bono solicitors rota and a family solicitor’s rota once a week.

 

They also campaigned for better policies and practices which affected people’s lives.

 

Last year they saw nearly 2000 people and advised them on 7,409 different issues. So far this year they have dealt with around 800 clients most with multiple issues. They have 44 volunteers and solve the problems of 2 in every 3 clients with an 88% satisfaction rate. In the first quarter of this year (April to June 2018) they had maintained £5,720 worth of benefits and tax credits and had written off £134,980 of debts for their clients.

 

Their strategic objectives were:

1)    To make it easier to get good quality advice;

2)    Be more influential;

3)    Become more sustainable and effective in the community; and

4)    Be a stronger equality champion.

 

They have also faced the following challenges:

·         Funding – this as always was a challenge. The EFDC grant had stayed the same for a number of years, but costs have gone up and they were having to do the same amount or more with the same money which amounted to a cut in funding. They were trying to diversify the funding base but it was a challenge.

·         EFDC geographical environment – rural settlements were widely spread and the transport system was not very good. They tended to see a lot of elderly clients and also clients with mental health issues and they had difficulty in travelling in to attend their offices. However, reaching out to rural areas costs money.

·         Volunteering recruitment and training – they have lost a few of their volunteers due to retirement recently and they needed to train up new people, which was expensive and time consuming.

·         Staff shortages – again this was linked to funding. They needed to recruit more people to fill in the gaps and they were working towards raising money to fund more positions.

·         Building partnerships relationships – again this was something that took time to arrange. They were currently talking to MIND and to Epping Forest College.

·         EFDC Objectives – a lot of these objectives were not part of their core work and without additional funding it did take away from their fundamental work that they did. The objectives such as going into schools to speak about handling their finances was not part of what they normally did and not achievable without extra funding.

 

As they were in a strategic partnership with EFDC, they would like to set out joint objectives with the council so that it matched more of their core work and to develop a quality service together.

 

They would also like better quality monitoring, at present monitoring was restricted to the 5 objectives but did not really touch on their core work.

 

The Chairman thanked the Chief Executive for her presentation and for the overview of the work that they undertook on a daily basis and opened the item out for questions from members present.

 

Councillor Baldwin thanks them for their informative presentation and commented that he valued the work that they did. He asked about Universal Credit, which was due to be introduced soon. This had problems as it was a complete change to the benefits system. What had they done to prepare. He was told that they had started training their staff and had put up information on their website. But a lot was still unclear. They were trying to get access to DWP for more information and they hoped to champion individuals with problems to get them reassessed by DWP.

 

Councillor Baldwin went on to ask about the GDPR regulations that came in recently, this must affect them as they kept a lot of information on their clients. Could they share this data with the DWP or EFDC if it was needed? Ms Anyanwu said that all their staff had been trained and they had amended their forms and processes. They had already had a high level of security for their data. The DWP required all information that was shared to be encrypted and they needed their clients consent.

 

Councillor Murray said that he had looked at their last annual report for 2016/17. It had said that their case load was 35% on benefits and tax credit cases. How much more did they expect for Universal Credit cases? Ms Anyanwu said that they had no real idea, but were worried. They had heard that tenants went into debt immediately Universal Credit came in due to the long period before the computer caught up with them. This also could end up in evictions in the private sector. This was very worrying.

 

Councillor Murray said that in the annual report they spoke of the strategic agreement with EFDC, which had kept its grant at the same level over the years. How many years and how did the objectives line up with their core work? Peter Gordon (CAB Trustee) said that he was grateful for the Council’s grant money but it was something like 10 years since it had been increased; and with inflation that had meant a real decrease, while their other costs increased. As for the objectives, there were 5 that were set with the service level agreement one of which was to run a gateway advice session at Ongar, which fitted in with their objectives. Another one was to find additional external funding; this was difficult to do, they had asked other organisations, but these tended to be linked with certain projects and were for a limited time; they had also asked the Parish Councils but that amounted to only a few hundred pounds extra. The two most difficult objectives were that they delivered financial knowledge to pupils in the districts schools. This was not something that they did normally and schools have shown no enthusiasm for this. The other objective was to deliver advice session to Norway House, this was proving difficult from their angle as they needed to train people to give advice in those circumstances. It would be nice to reach some mutually accepted objectives and not have them imposed on us.

 

Councillor Sartin noted that EFDC was not the only funder, Essex County Council also gave you a grant, as do three of the Town Council’s, just what was the percentage from Essex and was it earmarked for specific areas. She was told that it was a relatively small amount as compared to this council. They also got support from Epping Town Council, Loughton Town Council and Waltham Abbey Town Council and some smaller amounts from parish Councils. Councillor Sartin then asked if they received any funding from their national body. She was told that they did not. The parent body did receive money from Central Government but used it on administration and campaigning on various issues. They get no funding and in fact had to pay them a fee to be affiliated with them.

 

Councillor Lea asked if they did any fund raising events. She was told that they did run some events where they raised a few thousand pounds; but a lot of people thought that they were a government service and that was not the case.

 

Councillor Helen Kane clarified that the reason why the Council had not cut the funding was because they respected the CAB and thought they were doing a very good job. But the tax payer in the form of EFDC was paying 89% of their funding, and she had always encouraged them to seek external funding. Not because EFDC were going to lower or cut the funding but it was good to reduce the ratio to the Epping tax payer. The other thing was that the tax paying residents lived all over the district not just in Epping, Loughton or Waltham Abbey. And these more rural based residents also need access to them. We needed their presence in our rural areas.

 

Councillor Jon Whitehouse commenting on the schools side of things noted that there was at least one specialist charity specialising in giving financial education to pupils. Also on the Service Level Agreement we have with them, he noticed that it was reviewed annually when there was a chance to change the objectives if circumstance change over time. Had there been any amendments to the SLA over the past three years? Mr Gordon was unsure on this. It was a three year rolling agreement, and the three years expires this year, so we would be starting from scratch then. But the main provisions in the agreement have not been altered much.

 

Ms Anyanwu added that she had contacted all the schools and only one was interested. So if an objective says that we should deliver this to all seven schools and only one was interested (who wanted something specific and tailor made), then they were never going to meet that objective.

 

Councillor Wixley noted that they offered help to people with mental health issues; he presumed that this was help for their financial problems. Could they elaborate? Ms Anyanwu gave an example of a client who came in for financial/benefit advice and the advisor may realise by the end of the session that they did not really understand the advice given to them and that they needed additional support. There was also the question, was their problems causing the mental health issues or was it the other way around. 

 

Councillor Holly Whitbread asked if they had a breakdown of the ages of the people who used their services. Did they get a lot of young people and did they use new technologies to communicate the more basic information.  She was told that they did not have any figures broken down into age groups but could say that younger people tended to engage more on line, by telephone or by webchat. Councillor Whitbread then asked if they had an outreach programme to make more young people aware of their services. She was told that they did go into colleges and to tried and engage in community events etc.

 

Councillor Murray noted that from their last annual report the CAB received 70% of their funding from EFDC, 15% from the three Town Councils mentioned and from Essex County and 7% from a local charity.  Also it was all very well to ask for financial education in schools but it had to be done well and it would be better to use the specialist charities that did this. He also noted that a lot of the PHSE stuff had been squeezed out of schools now and the only things left were the GCSE measurable subjects we were not producing well rounded 6^th formers any more.

 

They were raising money for themselves; according to the annual report they had raised £5,000 and engage 44 volunteers; no other organisations can do this. It would be difficult to then ask these volunteers to spend more of their time in fund raising.

 

The feedback they got from clients was very good; they were doing a really good job and he thanked them for it.

 

Councillor Mohindra asked how much did we give them a year and how did they ensure that their clients were EFDC residents. Mr Gordon said that they received about £110,000 pa from EFDC and they always asked where their clients were from and were aware that they should not be advising people from outside of this area. Certainly a very high percentage of them were from this area.

 

Councillor Sarin asked if the £110,000 included the funding for the two debt advisors and was told that it did not, that was another £40,000 for that project.

 

Councillor Brookes asked, apart from finance, what could councillors do to make their job easier. She was told that they needed to get together to agree better objectives and let them know of any common themes or complaints that they may need to address, and  where they may need to develop their services in this area.

 

Councillor Brookes then asked if they got a lot of repeat visits and was told that these were mainly from people with mental health issues and people with debt issues.

 

Councillor Wixley noted that he had in the past been provided with a breakdown by ward of the number of people that had visited the CAB. This would be quite interesting to ward councillors. Mr Gordon said that this information was available, a breakdown of numbers by ward and they could provide it if wanted. Councillor Sartin said that would be interesting to see, not only for people from the towns but for the rural wards. Mr Gordon agreed to provide these figures. He reiterated that to do more outreach they needed more staff and more funding.

 

Councillor Helen Kane commented that as a council we did not impose the objectives, they were discussed and agreed mutually.

 

Councillor Chris Whitbread noted that the clear message that came across this evening was the council clearly supported the work done by the CAB in this district. However, he would like to know who used the CAB as the majority of their funding came from the residents of the district. If there were people from other authorities using the service then maybe we should recharge that authority. He was told that this figure was probably at 1% or less of users from other areas and if wanted figures, they could be provided.

 

Councillor Patel spoke about the outreach work and partnership working; could they have use of their premises or just have your partners advertise your services or signpost residents back to you. Ms Anyanwu said that this would take time to build up. They were presently looking at GP surgeries and hoping to build something there. We do use the Ongar Library but have to pay rent for that use.

 

Councillor Patel asked if their partners supported them by advertising their services. He was told that they did and they also asked supermarkets and shops to help publicise them.

 

Councillor Sartin noted that she had great respect for the volunteers that worked for the CAB. Forty Four volunteers did not seem a large number for a district of our size. Please pass on our thanks to them. Thank you for coming along tonight and giving us an overview of your work and answering the questions put to you. We look forward to receiving the information you have promised us this evening.