About Citizens Advice Leeds

Our vision and purpose

Citizens Advice Leeds is working for a fairer society where people are free from the effects of poverty and injustice.

Through our work we bring about changes for individuals, families and communities:

• We help people on low incomes to achieve better living conditions through increased income, better housing and improved health and wellbeing. 
• We help people to fight back against discrimination, abuse and illegal and unfair practices.
• We make connections between individual situations and collective injustice and use our evidence to campaign for policy solutions locally and nationally.

Our values

Our work is underpinned by our commitments to:

• Valuing equality, diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our work.
• Providing advice services that are free to clients and independent of political, religious or other external influences.
• Good governance and robust performance management and financial planning.
• Developing our people and offering opportunities to build a career in the advice sector.
• Encouraging innovation, resourcefulness and collaboration within our organisation and externally.

Click to read our Citizen Advice Leeds Annual Review Report 2022-2023

Our services

Citizens Advice Leeds helps over 30,000 people a year to resolve financial, housing, employment and other legal problems.  All our advice is provided free of charge to service users and we provide access to free interpreting to those who require it.

Since 2015 we have greatly expanded our telephone service which currently answers over 20,000 calls a year, and in addition to our face-to-face services we offer advice by email and webchat.  Our advice services include:

• Welfare rights advice and casework.
• Universal Credit advice and support (part of the national Help to Claim service).
• Debt advice and casework (part of the national Money and Pensions debt advice service).
• Outreach services for:
  • People experiencing mental health problems and their carers;
  • Patients of primary care services;
  • Survivors of traumatic injury (delivered in partnership with the Day One charity).
• A project combating fuel poverty through free advice (delivered in partnership with Northern Powergrid and local Citizens Advice offices across Yorkshire and the North East).
• Advice on housing, employment and other legal problems.
• Pensions guidance for over-50’s (part of the national Pension Wise service).
• We are a Hate Crime Reporting Centre.

Through the Leeds Advice Service we work with our partners Chapeltown Citizens Advice and Better Leeds Communities in making advice accessible to local communities:

• Face-to-face advice services in Chapeltown, including immigration advice.