Brighton and Hove Citizens Advice Bureau

Brighton and Hove CAB has a dedicated social policy team.

This team works to influence policy change locally and nationally, therefore improving the services and benefits available to our clients.

The Social Policy Team is currently involved in two national campaigns.

• Access To NHS Dentists – assessing our client’s ability to find an NHS Dentist in their local area.
• Tenancy Deposit Protection – arguing for a change in the law to stop rental deposits from being withheld unfairly.

The latter campaign has been ongoing since 1997 and all the hard work has now paid off, as the Government legislation to protect rental deposits will come into force in April2007. This would not have been possible without all the social policy evidence gathered by Bureau nationally.

Social Policy work is aimed at changing the lives of our Clients for the better by improving the policies that govern them locally and nationally.

The social policy team aims to highlight those issues which negatively affect our clients and bring them to the attention of policy and decision makers. In 05/06 our work has included: a report on local employment issues, involvement in national campaigns to increase the number of free ATM’s (read Article), highlighting some of the problems resulting from bailiff action; raising awareness of the new tenancy deposit scheme to be introduced in April 07 and continuing to highlight problems in accessing basic bank accounts, NHS dentists and some of the problems caused by Tax credit overpayments. The team also hosted a student placement from Brighton University which resulted in a valuable report on consumer related problems (read report). The social policy team is entirely staffed by volunteers.