Citizens Advice Northern Ireland's Annual General Meeting took place on Thursday 20th October 2011 at the Hilton Hotel, Templepatrick.
The theme of this year's AGM was "Responding to Recession" and the speakers on the day were Neil Gibson from Oxford Economics and Rachael Cray, the co-ordinator of the Beat the Recession Project.
‘Beat the Recession’ is a Big Lottery funded project which aims to extend debt and money advice services to help communities most in need in Northern Ireland cope with the effects of the recession. The project is being led by Citizens Advice, in partnership with Advice NI and the Law Centre NI.
John Devine, the Chairman of Citizens Advice, opened the meeting by discussing the progress of CAB over the past year. He highlighted the recently produced Fuel Poverty report, the organisation's achievements in reaching accredited status with regard to data security and the continued success of the projects run in conjunction with other organisations such as Dealing with Debt (with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment), The Benefits and Money Advice Service (with the Royal British Legion) and the Macmillan Project.
Brian Compston, the Treasurer, then took the meeting through the accounts for the previous year. This was Brian's last AGM as Treasurer and all those present at the meeting thanked Brian for his hard work and dedication to CAB in carrying out this role over the past 12 years.
CAB's Chief Executive Derek Alcorn then presented his report to the meeting. Derek highlighted the Benefit Take Up project, run in conjunction with the Social Security Agency. It was clear to all that this project represented real value for money, as it was estimated that the additional benefits recovered for clients though this project, if held for the average length of claim, would be £29.8 million.
Derek also brought attention to the valuable service being provided by CAB when representing clients at Tribunal Appeals. He went on to say the volume of clients remaining unrepresented at such appeals was a "concrete case of un-met legal need". One third of all those appearing with a representative at tribunals are represented by a CAB advisor. Being thus represented greatly increases their chances of success, from 1 in 5 to 1 in 2.
Derek closed his report by drawing the meeting's attention to the continued efforts of CAB to standardise the service being received by its clients. "Such standarisation underpins our quality of service" he added.
The first guest speaker of the day was Neil Gibson from Oxford Economics. Neil is in charge of Oxford's Regional Forecasting Service and their Thought Leadership Division.
Neil focused his attention on the current economic situation in Northern Ireland and how the financial challenges are increasing but the amount of money available to respond to those challenges is getting smaller. He stressed the need for all organisations to be able to show they represent best value for money from their funding in the services and outcomes they provide.
Neil went on to talk about the increasing feeling amongst the public that public funds need to been seen to be administered fairly and to achieve maximum benefit. He added that while many feel a sense of entitlement to support, not so many people give consideration to the generation of that support, where it will come from and whose responsibility it is to ensure it is available.
Neil concluded his address by reiterating its key themes of Realism in regard to how the Northern Ireland ecomony is funded and Northern Ireland's citizens need to take Responsibility for managing its own financial affairs.
The final speaker of the day was Rachael Cray. Rachael give a very interesting talk on the Beat the Recession Project and all that it has achieved so far. She brought to the meeting's attention the new ways in which the project is reaching out to the public to offer assistance, and how the service has responded to the ever changing demographic of those seeking advice from CAB. She highlighted the web as a key new delivery mechnism.
Rachael also emphasised the need to bring advice to the public using non-traditional methods and venues as she discussed the Roadshows which the project has set up, Through Partnerships with Tescos and Libraries NI, by visiting shopping centres such as the Kennedy Centre and Sprucefield and by attending events such as the Balmoral show the project has carried out more than 30 roadshows and reached vast numbers of people seeking debt and money advice.
Rachael had also set up a pilot scheme to make Beat the Recession advisers available in jobcentres in Belfast. The scheme has been successful and negotiations are currently underway to bring the project to jobcentres throughout NI.
The availability of advice, through out of hours webchat, social networking and email makes this project unique and is providing the anonymous, flexible, immediate and dynamic service so many CAB clients want.
The meeting then took a break for lunch and resumed in the afternoon with a closed session for bureau.