East End CABx doesn't just provide advice to local people - in addition we work towards improving the policies and practices that affect people's lives through their work on social policy.

The experience of Citizens Advice Bureaux gives us a unique, fresh insight into the problems faced by people living in the East End. We collect evidence of CAB clients' problems and use this to campaign for changes in national and local policies and services. We have a key role in speaking up for clients, raising issues brought into our bureaux, contributing to public debate and informing legislation.

Our policy and campaign work covers a huge range of issues including consumer, debt, housing, benefits, immigration, employment, legal matters and health.

The social policy volunteer team at East End CABx work together to create and run campaigns on local social policy issues and to participate in national campaigns. The team have worked on diverse campaigns from the cost of school uniforms to the regulation of lettings agents, scams affecting local people including 'fake' landlords taking deposits from potential tenants and disappearing with the money, and the national Citizens Advice Fair Welfare campaign to create a fairer benefits system.

Free Mobile Calls for Benefit Claimants

East End Citizens Advice Bureau has been campaigning for several years to reduce the cost of calling the government to access basic services such as benefits and crisis loans. Leeds CAB conducted a successful campaign entitled ‘Hung Up’, which called upon the government to make these changes. In the past two years the Government has made improvements by making calls to claim state benefits and state pensions free from BT landlines and mobiles. However, claimants have been charged for calls from other mobile phone providers. Currently, 12% of UK households use only mobile phones and do not have a land line. Mobile phone users could spend up to half an hour on hold to Jobcentre Plus, costing them £12. The Department of Work and Pensions has reached an agreement with the six largest mobile phone operators: O2, Orange, Tesco Mobile, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile or Vodafone to end charges to their customers to its Benefit Claim lines from 25 January 2010. This will include Jobseeker’s Allowance, State Pension, Pension Credit and the Employment and Support Allowance claims. Hackney and Whitechapel CAB has experienced a number of cases where clients have needed to access emergency services such as crisis loans and have not been able to afford to call these lines. Residents will greatly benefit from this change. They will no longer be penalised when they need to claim benefits because they are calling from a mobile phone. Fred Sekindi, Adviser at Hackney CAB, has stated: This will be good news for most of our clients. The majority of our clients do not have landlines. They either have to come to the Bureau to contact the DWP which puts a strain on our financial resources or go to the job centre to use the free phone.” Clients can now feel assured that when they call DWP from their mobile phones, they won’t be penalised.

Adding Up Campaign

East End CAB had a great success in increasing school uniform grants for Hackney residents. They worked with Hackney Learning Trust (HLT) to increase the grant from £60 to £100.

Many parents in Hackney struggle to afford school uniforms when their children transfer from primary to secondary school. HLT ha d a relatively low level of uniform grant which caused financial hardship for parents. Selina Rodrigues and Mathew James in the Social Policy department of East End CAB gathered local anecdotal feedback from parents and the research undertaken by National CAB to emphasise the problems.

East End CAB sent a questionnaire to schools in Hackney about suppliers and costs of school uniforms. They discussed good practice with the schools that responded.

East End CAB then attended the School Admission Forum. They presented the feedback from parents, national data and the results from the school questionnaire. This showed that not all schools keep costs low or offer nearly new uniform or hardship funds. It also showed that parents were not always aware of these good practices where they exist. Selina and Mathew supplied articles to the HLT for the schools’ Bulletin to highlight issues such as second hand uniform sales and swap schemes in schools.

After a year of campaigning by East End CAB, HLT agreed to increase the uniform grant from £60 to £100, effective from 1 April 2009. HLT alerted parents to the grant in letters on the transfer of their children to secondary school.