Changes at Citizens Advice Surrey
To ensure Citizens Advice in Surrey remains strong and sustainable, we are aligning our organisations to the new unitary authority boundaries of East and West Surrey.
We are proud that, in 2025-26, Citizens Advice in Surrey supported 28,688 clients with advice on over 127,000 issues and delivered over £17 million in financial gains for our clients, reducing the pressure on public services and supporting people to move from desperation, to finding practical and financial solutions to their problems, helping to improve their wellbeing as a result.
We are one of only a handful of voluntary organisations in Surrey that support such a large number of people with such a diverse range of problems.
Overwhelmingly the people we support come from the most deprived areas and the most excluded groups in the county. Our support to address financial, debt, housing, employment and family issues provides a crucial lifeline, and demand for our services is unprecedented, yet across the board our funding is reducing.
Treasury approved financial models demonstrate that on average, for every £1 invested in Citizens Advice, we generate £4 of fiscal value to the economy and £28 of public value. We want to be able to continue to offer our service in Surrey, but the viability of our local organisations is currently under threat, and we know we need to change to secure our service for the future.
Before the announcement of local government reform, Surrey Local Citizens Advice services had already begun to work more closely together in recognition of the challenges we face.
Collaboration has enabled some services to scale up operations, work with larger partners, secure Surrey-wide funding and maintain high standards of delivery. The funding landscape and the government’s devolution agenda now accelerates this trajectory. What began as collaboration is evolving into a clear opportunity for structural integration and the Local Citizens Advice charities in the East and West of the county have been working together to achieve this.
As Local Citizens Advice charities we share many core characteristics:
- A common mission to deliver free, impartial, confidential advice
- Similar clients need profiles, with benefits, housing and debt consistently the most common issues
- Increasingly complex cases, with clients presenting with multiple, interlinked problems
- Reliance on highly trained volunteers alongside paid staff
- Exposure to financial uncertainty, short-term funding and rising demand
In the East, the Local Citizens Advice organisations have taken an ‘in principle’ decision to merge the six local delivery charities into one organisation. Detailed due diligence is currently taking place, along with the development of a future service delivery model and the drafting of legal and governance arrangements. When these actions are complete a final decision will be made by the six organisations in the autumn of 2026 with a target completion date of 1st April 2027.
In the West, the four Local Citizens Advice organisations have agreed ‘in principle’ to join together in a Group Structure to form Citizens Advice West Surrey (CAWS). They are in the process of setting up a parent charity/company which will become the strategic, funding and governance lead for the four local organisations, who will become subsidiaries tasked with delivering the service locally. Legal and governance arrangements are progressing, with a view to being completed by December 2026.
Surrey Welfare Rights Unit (SWRU) is a county-wide member of Citizens Advice. SWRU already works in close partnership with the other local Citizens Advice and will continue to support the new merged and group structures across both East and West Surrey unitary authorities.
The primary test of any proposal is its positive impact on clients and communities. We believe that both the merger in the East and the Group structure in the West will deliver:
- Improved and protected quality, accessibility and reach of advice services
- A clear vision for our service, informed by robust client and community profilingHigh-quality, inclusive services that are client-centred, that are rooted in local communities and reflect their diversity
- A focus on effective use of resources, maximising impact with finite funding
- Collaboration, recognising the importance of partnership working with our colleagues in local government, health and the VCSE sector
By making these changes we will give our service the best chance of being able to deliver for our communities as well as addressing
- rising demand driven by the cost-of-living crisis,
- growing complexity of client need,
- increased compliance, digital and cyber-security costs,
- intense competition for a shrinking pool of funding,
- the sustainability of the Citizens Advice service in Surrey.
Our priority is to protect service continuity wherever possible, to work constructively with our valued staff and volunteers and to continue to work with our important local government, health and VCSE partners to serve our communities as we undertake this transformation.