Following the retirement at last year’s AGM of our previous Chair, Alan Braithwaite, as an interim measure the Board decided that the role of Chairman would be split between Paul Sweeney and Piers Roberts acting as Co-Chairs. Alan was an irreplaceable force (chairing five AGMs), and the Board decided that care should be taken over the appointment of his eventual successor.
With the Government’s creation of ‘Unitary Authorities’, Sudbury and South Suffolk Citizens’ Advice believes that along with other Suffolk CABs, something of a crossroads is approaching in both our independent futures and the probable effect on funding. As the government’s plans become clearer, the development of the unitary authorities is likely to require full board and executive focus under the rigorous chairing of Alan’s permanent successor to ensure Sudbury and South Suffolk Citizens’ Advice’s corner is fought.
As your Co-Chairs, we have joined with the four other Suffolk Citizens Advice Offices to make sure we’re as collectively forearmed as possible for the coming changes the creation of the Unitary Authorities will inevitably introduce. We feel it important to co-ordinate thoughts and views (as far as they’re currently possible to ascertain), on the unitary changes in general, the likely effect the changes may have to funding and in particular to seek the best outcome for Sudbury and South Suffolk Citizens Advice in the aftermath of the changes.
The first thing we would like to affirm again is the wonderful work of our team of staff and volunteers. They make a huge difference to so many lives every year in our area as evidenced in the client feedback that we elicit every year. Thank you everyone – Colleen and her executive team, staff, volunteers and trustees - who makes such a contribution to the valuable output of the office.
I know our staff and volunteers take great personal satisfaction in the positive feedback we receive. You can read more about our successes from the Impact Report that can be downloaded from the website.
Let me remind you of our mission. Our principal objectives are “to promote any charitable purpose for the benefit of the community in Sudbury and the surrounding areas by the advancement of education, the protection and preservation of health and the relief of poverty, sickness and distress”.
We believe we are continuing to achieve this mission statement, particularly on poverty and distress. The headline returns to the district in the year under report were about £1m, very similar to the previous year. Clearly there continues to be a high demand for our advice and in our view, as macro-economic conditions remain challenging, we are expecting high demand to continue.
We now have a volunteer team of around 50 (including Trustees), and we’re continuing to recruit successfully.
Our income has fallen so that costs are not fully covered meaning we posted an increased deficit of £51,000. In the long term this situation is not sustainable, and the board has been working on actions to repair the deficit.
Sarah Bartlett will take you through the numbers in more detail in her remarks.
Notwithstanding this challenging outlook, it is important to recognise the contributions of our many supporters for their funding and especially Babergh District Council, Suffolk County Council, Sudbury Town Council and various Parish Councils, the Rope Trust and the National Lottery.
Babergh District Council with which we work closely on a day-to-day basis are superb supporters of us and we remain fully committed to developing this partnership as the government’s unitary authority plans develop.
It is important to also note our value to wider society and the fact that these benefits are spread widely across the public sector; to do this, we use a HM Treasury approved model to calculate the financial value of our advice and the positive outcomes it contributes to individuals and society showing that in recent years we have generated in excess of £9m in societal contribution.
The connection between poverty, distress and health could not be clearer from the comments and numbers you can find in our Impact report.
I want to pay tribute again to the staff and volunteers, the essential engine which drives our success. We had a successful Away Day with staff and volunteers earlier in the summer in order to tap our collective brains regarding funding and we will be using some of the results of this to we hope supplement our funding in the next few months. The commitment of staff and volunteers and their individual expertise is the core of the organisation and its service to our district. The results contained in the Impact Report bear out this achievement. Thank you.
At the Board level, I thank the Trustees for their contributions in this challenging period as the organisation continues to rebuild. Since the October 2024 AGM we have welcomed three new trustees who are already making a positive contribution to our output. We are open to recruiting further trustees in the coming months and invite applicants who feel they can contribute to our leadership and direction. Please look up our page on LinkedIn if you are interested in joining us as a trustee.
Do please stay after a cup of tea to hear some reflections on 86 years at Citizens Advice (it was established in 1939), the challenges for our clients and the implications for the Citizens Advice Network in a period of austerity and cost of living pressures. It will run for not more than 30 minutes with time for Q&A with the team.
PBAR
1 October 2025