Salford Citizens Advice

Year summary 2023/24.

Over the financial year ending 31 March 2024 we advised a total of 15,883 clients with over 68,817 different problems.

  • Benefits 35% (24,151)
  • Housing 17% (11,730)
  • Universal Credit 13% (8,770)
  • Debt 11% (7,885)

We advised over 1,900* households around access to charitable support – most of which would have been referral to local food banks; 431 education issues; 1,894 employment problems; 1,729 financial services and capability; 104 issues relating to gender violence, abuse and hate crime; 2,249 community care and health; 1,843 immigration and asylum; 1,617 legal disputes; 1,424 family and relationship issues; 1,111 around travel issues; 1,428 utility and fuel issues; and 590 death and bereavement issues.

Trends in our advice giving indicate a continuous pressure on housing and homelessness enquiries (this is up 9% from last year) driven in the main by increasing volatility in the private rented sector and the impact of the government’s policy to displace refugees and asylum seekers from their temporary accommodation. The rate of growth and pressure on housing enquiries has remained broadly stable throughout the year – and combined with the previous year might suggest that the housing crisis has at least stopped getting worse. This may be due in some small part to the uplift in local housing allowance limits. That said we remain of the view that the private sector housing market’s failure is likely to continue to drive a high level of evictions and homelessness, and even with a reduction in interest rates, will not improve substantially throughout the rest of the year.

The need to refer to foodbanks has already reduced over the year; we think this was because we saw some reduction in the rates of food cost inflation over the year and because of good provision of emergency support in Salford through the Housing Support Fund throughout the reporting period. Despite this, every day we referred five households to a food bank throughout the year. This has essentially fallen back to ‘normal’ levels.

The impact of ‘managed migration’ to Universal Credit was beginning to be felt during the year – with a growth of issues around Universal Credit of 10%.

Employment enquiries have remained stable – for all of this year, as well as for last year. This year the quarterly average for employment problems being 474 as compared to 557 last year, down 14% year on year. This does suggest a relatively stable employment market, and one which has maintained this stability over the last two years.

The gradual settling of the energy crisis has resulted in a reduction in utility and fuel issues dropping some 200 enquiries from last year – to 1,428 this year.

Sadly, we see a continued rise in the number of death and bereavement issues, this year it was 590 for the year (against 359 last year). This nearly two-thirds increase saw a spike in quarter 3, 2023/24.

Volunteering was hit during the pandemic – along with being adversely impacted by changes to the socio-economic environment. It has remained broadly stable – with about fifty people volunteering each week. The value of this volunteering (using the council’s social value metric) is some £350,000 a year.

Total website advice use was 151,130 interactions (up 8%), with some 2,346 clients being referred to us by over thirty different partners using our referral tool.

The National Association of Citizens Advice impact of advice assessment** indicates that in the year:

  • Our total fiscal value to the city was £4,792,492.
  • Our public value was £34,745,952 (how much better off Salford is because of our work).
  • The total value to the people we help was £24,610,504.
  • The value to the local authority by avoiding homelessness was £500,848.
  • The value of a reduced use of health services was £683,830, with a total gain to the NHS in Salford of £808, 919.
  • The £710,134 in additional Attendance Allowance claimed in the year is a good proxy for the sum saved locally in terms of Community Care costs.
  • The gain to local social housing providers was £1,146,688 – largely through the avoidance of evictions.
  • The gain to central government by keeping people in work was £1,959,272.

*  Including 1009 clients / households assisted via the Trussell Trust Partnership Programme.

** The National Association of Citizens Advice Impact model was developed by New Economy. The model is approved by the Treasury, who are experts in financial value assessment. The approach taken in creating the data is very conservative and only includes actual determined values – it is therefore the very minimum of our actual impact.

 

Tom Togher

July 12, 2024.