Christmas is well and truly behind us now and for many the reality of high fuel cost, credit card bills landing on our doorsteps at the end of January coupled with the general increased costs of living. This could leave many of us feeling bewildered, stressed and worried about how to make ends meet.
Citizen’s Advice Bedford at 7a St. Pauls Square, Bedford, MK40 1SQ offers Free, Independent, Impartial and confidential advice to anyone living or working within Bedford Borough and can help.
Services that we offer include assistance with budgeting, (particularly popular with clients with debt problems and those going onto Universal Credit),comparing and switching your energy providers to ensure your gas and electricity are on the most affordable tariffs as well as any Benefits, Debt, Employment, Housing, Immigration and Consumer problems you might have.
Although information can be accessed via our website, lots of people prefer to talk through their problems so we are able to offer several different access routes for our clients to provide flexibility to all.
We offer daily ‘drop in’ sessions and also daily ‘debt clinics’- (No appointments needed)
Monday to Thursday 9.30am – 3.00pm
Fridays 9.30am – 12.00pm
We also have an Outreach ‘drop in’ clinic at London Road Doctors Surgery on Fridays – 9.30am – 3.00pm
We have a dedicated telephone service:
Monday – Thursday 9.45am – 1.00pm
Tel: 01234 867944 – (All calls are charged at a local rate. All calls are recorded for training and monitoring purposes. Your details are also logged on our internal computer system, which are not shared without your permission and are protected by the Data Protection Act.)
We have an email enquiry form linked to our website:
What you may not know is that our Advice Service is mainly provided by a dedicated team of fully trained volunteers. Volunteers come to us for many reasons and without our volunteers we would be unable to provide the service that we do. Employers like our very structured modular training programme and as a volunteer you will learn many transferable skills.
To be a volunteer you need to be able to commit to a minimum of 3-6 months for at least 6 hours each week, have an open mind and be non - judgemental, be IT literate, have good written and spoken English and want to be part of a team that is making a difference to our local community.
All volunteers undertake a highly respected structured training programme and have dedicated supervision and support from a team of Supervisors.
If you would like to join our diverse team of volunteers or would like to find out more please visit ’ work for us’ and ‘ volunteer vacancies’ pages on the website www.bedfordcab.org.uk or for a chat to find out more please contact :
Angela Stammers – Training and Recruitment Manager
01234 346543 – 07496 676883