Birmingham Neighbourhood Advice Service consultation

Overview

The City Council needs to reduce its expenditure on delivering advice through Neighbourhood Offices and Customer Service Centres in order to deliver savings that were identified in the 2015/16 Birmingham City Council budget.  Presently the Neighbourhood Advice Service operates from Neighbourhood Offices and Customer Service Centres. In addition, the Housing Advice Service also operates out of 4 Customer Service centres and this is subject to a separate consultation.

The Neighbourhood Advice Service includes Housing Benefit enquiries, Council Tax enquiries, assistance with benefit claims, debt advice and income maximisation. 

The Housing Advice Service provides assistance with joining the Council Housing list, discussing housing options, seeking temporary accommodation and assistance with Homelessness or Homelessness Prevention.

Why your views matter

Due to decreasing resources and finances the council needs to make changes to services. We are hopeful that the proposed changes to the services will bring about improvements in some areas such as allowing more queries to be answered by ‘phone meaning more time available for appointments where they are needed.  However, we also acknowledge that such changes can bring with them concerns from citizens and may not identify all of the potential impacts on our customers. We also recognise that customers may be well placed to suggest other improvements that we may not have thought of.

Therefore we are undertaking public consultation to get as much feedback on our proposals as we can to inform our decision making as we move forward.

The proposals on which we are seeking your views:

The Neighbourhood Advice Service

In relation to the Neighbourhood Advice Service, it is proposed to provide specialist advice over the phone so that more issues can be resolved in this way whilst protecting face to face appointments for the most complex situations or people who are most vulnerable.

It is proposed to deal with an increasing number of housing benefit and council tax enquiries over the phone. For other advice queries it is proposing to call people within 2 hours of them contacting us  to offer specialist advice over the phone and then, if the situation deems it appropriate, offer a face to face appointment.

The proposed future service would offer general face to face appointments at 5 main locations in the city (Quinton, City Centre, Saltley, Erdington & Northfield as well as one day a week at Druids Heath) and a further two locations at Letting Suites for council tenants (Ladywood & Sparkbrook).  The service is also seeking to deliver advice in partnership with a range of other advice organisations in the third sector.

The proposal for delivering these services in partnership with the third sector remains in development and as such we would welcome your feedback at this early stage.

As part of these proposals we are consulting with and seeking the views of citizens of Birmingham and users of our services along with professionals delivering advice in these areas of work.  The short survey you have been given today asks for your comments and feedback in relation to the service you have accessed today.  Once you have completed the survey please return it to a member of staff.

If you would like to provide more detailed feedback, feedback on another service within affected by this consultation or see more information please visit our consultation webpage at: www.birminghambeheard.org.uk/people-1/neighbourhoodadvice