Citizens Advice East Berkshire receives £2,500 from Berkshire Community Foundation to help maintain Maidenhead drop-in services over winter
Berkshire, UK (11 March 2023) – Citizens Advice East Berkshire has received a £2,500 grant from Berkshire Community Foundation in its latest round of funding.
The money will help to cover unexpected costs in heating bills for the Maidenhead Community Centre premises from which the charity runs its advice drop-in sessions and telephone call centre. A 40% increase in electricity costs for the building since 2021, combined with a broken boiler has led to significant, unforeseen operational costs for Citizens Advice East Berkshire (CAEB).
As the cost of living crisis continues to put people into severe hardship, CAEB has experienced unprecedented demand for their advice services. Last year CAEB assisted over 2,000 residents living within the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead on 11,868 issues, with welfare benefit, debt and housing being the most prevalent.
Pippa Banham, CEO at Citizens Advice East Berkshire, said:
We are incredibly grateful to the Berkshire Community Foundation for their grant which helps us to maintain a physical presence and drop in service in the area. Our clients are often very vulnerable, on the margins of society and face practical struggles every day to feed their families, pay their bills or stay in their home. Providing a warm office for our clients, staff and volunteers is necessary for us to continue delivering our vital frontline services in Maidenhead. Our biggest challenge remains finding the capacity to help more people. To achieve this we need to recruit, train and retain more volunteers and continue to deliver high quality services. In particular, we want to increase the number of local residents we see face-to-face in the Maidenhead Office. The grant will help us focus our attention on these ambitions.
Jon Yates, CEO of Berkshire Community Foundation, said:
At Berkshire Community Foundation, we work to enable vibrant, caring and resilient communities by directing philanthropic funds towards charities that perform vital functions for local people. We are delighted to support Citizens Advice East Berkshire in its important work and look forward to the positive impact enabled by this grant.
CAEB offer free, impartial, confidential and independent advice and information to give people the knowledge they need to find their way forward – whoever they are, and whatever their problem.
Berkshire Community Foundation works across Berkshire to raise, then distribute, funds to charities and community groups in the County. Find out more at www.berkshirecf.org
