Citizens Advice is 85 years old this year!

Suffolk branches join forces to celebrate 85 years of Citizens Advice
Representatives from the five local Citizens Advice offices across Suffolk met at Ravenwood Hotel to celebrate the 85th birthday of Citizens Advice. Now a national institution, the first 200 Citizens Advice Bureaux opened on 4 September 1939, the day after war broke out. The network grew at one stage to over 1000 local offices but following consolidation across the country now stands at around 250 separate offices.
The five current local Citizens Advice charities in Suffolk are Citizens Advice West Suffolk, Citizens Advice Mid Suffolk, Sudbury and South Suffolk Citizens Advice, Citizens Advice East Suffolk and Citizens Advice Ipswich. Between them in 2023-2024 they helped 28,921 people to address 133,270 issues. This resulted in £8.5 million income gained for clients, and over £9 million of debt managed effectively. In order to achieve this, there were some 161,844 email, telephone and face-to-face interactions.
All of the Suffolk Citizens Advice offices rely heavily on volunteers to work alongside their paid teams, and a total of 82,070 hours were donated by Suffolk volunteers last year. This equates to £2.8 million worth of volunteer time.
As independent charities, all five local Citizens Advice offices (LCAs) are constantly under pressure for funding, applying for grants and project funding from a wide range of organisations including all of the local councils, the Suffolk Community Foundation, trusts and private sector organisations. Every £1 of funding has been shown to deliver £26.12 in public value.