Redundancy fears at Northamptonshire charity
Citizens Advice West Northants say it's due to rising costs.
An advice charity in Northamptonshire is telling us they're having to make redundancies due to a number of rising costs and funding difficulties.
Citizens Advice West Northamptonshire and Cherwell are looking to reduce the number of venues they have to lower overheads such as energy bills.
Over the last year we’ve seen a series of rising prices, such as mortgage rates, food, and just yesterday the energy price cap hiked by 10 percent, meaning typical utility bills are more expensive.
‘We are working twice as hard than ever before’
Citizens Advice are making changes which will see more volunteers in the community in an attempt to lower the costs of venues and other overheads.
Pat Coomber-Wood, Chief Executive of Citizens Advice West Northamptonshire and Cherwell, said: “We are feeling very overwhelmed at the moment and our anxiety is that people are waiting so long on the phone because the demand is so high.
“That makes people think that we’re not doing the service that we need to do and we’re working twice as hard than ever before.
“So, the pressure is tremendous, our staff and volunteers are stretched very often to breaking point.
“It’s something that we have to keep on top of, but we want to help people, and we are committed to helping people. We will keep doing everything that we can to make a difference to local people’s lives.”
"People don't realise we are a charity"
The charity provides advice to people struggling based on their rights and responsibilities.
But Pat Coomber-Wood says they are struggling to cover bills themselves;
"We are struggling to met client needs, and access the usual grant funding that we used to access in the past. And one of the big things is that people don't realise we are a charity.
"We get very little in the way of donations, so that means we don't have free reserves to use as we chose, the funding has to be used in the way the funder ascribes."
She says that they are hoping to maintain as many people as possible, but some will leave and some new roles will also be created.