Brutal cuts slice through CAB
Leamington’s Citizens Advice Bureau will soon be “unrecognisable” due to the cutbacks it is suffering, its manager has said.
Hilary Holland has worked or volunteered for the charity for 30 years but she says the situation is so severe that even she has no idea of what the future will bring.
She said: “We are going through an absolute slicing in our funding. The voluntary sector is going through cut after cut after cut.
“We have lost three members of staff since November and that has a knock-on effect on volunteers.
“By August the CAB is going to be unrecognisable.”
While Warwick District Council, which owns the branch’s building in Hamilton Terrace, has put forward options for an alternative site including Leamington town hall, Mrs Holland says now is not the time to be thinking about a move.
She said: “We have a 25-year lease since 1999 so we are safe here for the moment.
“In March we are expecting another cut when central government withdraws funding for our debt workers. This is not a good time for the CAB to be thinking about it’s future needs when we don’t know what our future is.
“At the moment we are just in survival mode, as are other voluntary organisations and the local authorities.
“My guess is the district council wants to realise some capital on this building, while the town hall is virtually empty. It makes sense for them, but it’s not the right time for us. It’s about lack of time and money.”
While the branch is currently run by a team of 18 staff and more than 50 volunteers, Mrs Holland said several more employees are under threat of redundancy and the only funding the charity considers reliable at the moment is the long-term agreements it has with other charities.
She said: “The volunteers side is always very buoyant, but they do need training and support from paid staff.
“I don’t think the CAB will close because it has adapted to change over the years.
“But it won’t be long before we are no longer the organisation we used to be.”
Debt and benefits were the two biggest issues about which people were asking the branch for advice last year.
Mrs Holland said: “Those problems are not going to go away – they are going to get worse.
“The policies of the coalition government are that the money spent on public services is too high. But local communities are excluded from all that and they just need help.”
Speaking at a district council meeting last week, Cllr Les Caborn, responsible for customer and information services, said: “We are aware of the staff issues at the CAB and of the loss of funding and we value their work and will continue to work with them.”
But he added: “The building in Hamilton Terrace will need to be managed to the benefit of this authority, our residents and our taxpayers. The situation is fluid.”
To contact the CAB Warwick district branch, call 0844 855 2322.
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Weather for Leamington
Tuesday 22 May 2012
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