Hard up charity will get more help from lottery cash

Citizens Advice helped more than 3,000 in North Devon over six months

North Devon Council could give thousands of pounds more to a struggling chairty.

Citizens Advice in Torridge, North, Mid and West Devon (TNMWD) says it needs to double its funding to provide its service in the area.

At the moment it answers only 40 per cent of calls, people are being turned away, and waiting times for appointments are up to 20 days.

The council’s policy development committee recommends the council puts  £7,000 more into the charity for the next financial year, on top of the £45,000 it already gives.

Half of the work of Citizens Advice is funded by Devon County Council and district and parish councils.

The other half comes from charities it works with like Macmillan Cancer Support, the Trussell Trust, the Big Lottery Community Fund and the Money and Pensions Service.

But CEO of Citizens Advice TNMWD Vicki Rowe said it had a budget deficit of £150,000 in 2025/26 and would need to find this “just to break even”. If it can’t, it won’t be sustainable next year.

The 36 volunteers and 13 paid staff working in North Devon helped 3,159 people with more than 11,000 problems in the six months to last September, considerably more than the previous year.

Since the pandemic, the number and complexity of problems people were facing had increased. Most enquiries are about welfare benefits.

The branch, which operates drop-in services in Barnstaple, Ilfracombe and South Molton as well as having a presence at the foodbank in Barnstaple and Fern Centre at North Devon District Hospital, is seeing more people concerned about energy costs and homelessness.

The charity claims £5 million pounds of extra income is predicted to be brought into households in North Devon in this financial year as a result of its work.

Ms Rowe said it had healthy reserves up until this year which had gone into helping more people. It plans to apply for more grants and develop more partnerships and more volunteers would help the charity.

The number of volunteers had risen from 36 to 80, but plans to increase that to 100 and it is working with Petroc College to get more young volunteers .

The council has raised money from a community lottery launched last year and is looking to help some of the charities and organisations that have signed up to it.

As well as the £7,000 for Citizens Advice,, the policy development committee recommends the council donates to £2,000 to Age Concern.

Cllr Matthew Bushell (Ind, South Molton) said that, having heard how hard up the organisation is and now many people it serves, it is the right thing to do.