This campaign has now closed
To establish a permanent foothold in the Birmingham City Centre, Enabling The BCAB to provide a stable fixed point of contact to deliver our advice service within the city centre.
Categories
Beneficiaries
Situation
Birmingham Citizens Advice Bureau currently lease’s 6 properties across Birmingham which we use to facilitate the advice service we provide to the citizens of Birmingham. As part of good fund management we are constantly seeking the best value for money on our leases and this has meant that in the past regular office moves are necessary to keep costs down. Although these moves are usually the best or sometimes the only course of action we can strategically make it causes widespread disruption to our staff and most importantly to our clients. Not only is this disruption a hindrance to our service but the cost of adapting new offices to the needs of our clients can be high. The City Centre bureau is by far the busiest office servicing around 60,000 Birmingham Citizens every year solving £11,000,000 worth of debt and benefit issues. It is the busiest because it is the hub of the city, the majority of transport links in Birmingham stop here and so it is the easiest bureau for the people of Birmingham to get to in their times of need. Due to raising property values, the cost of leasing Property in the city centre is increasing at a greater rate that outside the centre and at a far greater rate than the rate that our income is increased. This means that in years to come the city centre bureau will be no more. The Birmingham Citizens Advice Bureau wish to purchase property in the city centre to allow the stability that we need to maintain, grow and improve the service that we as the largest Bureau in the country can provide from the very heart of Birmingham.