Manager's Review of the Past Year

It was very good to learn recently that the readers of Prima, one of the UK's highest selling women's monthly magazines, voted the Citizens Advice Bureaux network their most helpful organisation in their recent 'Make Life Simple' awards. Prima's editor referred to the organisation as part of the British landscape and the first place many people turned to when they needed advice. In the poll, many readers referred to the friendliness of the service which I think is very well-deserved praise for all the staff and volunteers around the UK and here in Chelmsford, who work tirelessly for the service.

It was also very pleasing to note that for the first time a monetary value was put on the help provided by the 21,000 volunteers working in Citizens Advice Bureaux - an amazing £73m. By quantifying the value in financial terms, it shows two things: the sheer kindness, good nature and determination of all those volunteers working for the common good and it underlines the fact that all bureaux are charities and the very large potential cost of providing the service if it were a commercial venture. Here in Chelmsford I believe we are particularly fortunate in having such committed and expert volunteers - we would be literally unable to function without them.
This leads me on to comment that 2005 is officially the Year of the Volunteer. I intend to make this the year when we can attract and train a record number of volunteers (more on how to volunteer is at the back of this Review). Thanks to Chelmsford Borough Council we now have extra space to accommodate more volunteers we were able to install a new electronic client handling system CASE. CASE was designed by the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux - whose trading name is 'Citizens Advice' - for use in all bureaux and the intention was to make the whole operation function more effective.

Whilst on the subject of our new computer system - CASE, paid and voluntary staff have had to face a massive challenge over this past year, not only coming to grips with a new way of recording each and every client and enquiry, but for many it also entailed either learning new skills in computer operation or brushing up on existing skills such as typing. As ever, the dedication and professionalism shone through, especially at the start when the system was far from stable which restricted training on the new functions to just one week.
Thanks to this dedication we are now in a position to recruit more advisers. After they have been trained, it will allow us to see more clients and develop other means of access to the Chelmsford Citizens Advice Bureau Service.

One new way of accessing the service is by means of an electronic touch screen kiosk. These are currently on trial at sixteen bureaux, Chelmsford being one of those. I am pleased to say that from the latest statistics available, some 275 clients used the kiosk visiting a staggering 596 websites in the month of February. This makes Chelmsford's kiosk the most used out of the sixteen on trial.