Did you know that as well as providing information, advice and advocacy, Citizens Advice Broxbourne is also busy researching and campaigning on the issues that impact our clients? We look at policy and/or practice which is acting, often inadvertently, to create disadvantage or discrimination for the people impacted by them. And we campaign hard to make positive changes.

Citizens Advice also has a national team devoted to research and campaigns work and they use the vast quantity of anonymised data that is generated by local offices, such as Citizens Advice Broxbourne, to carry out research into the issues being faced by different groups within different communities. They aim to end inequality and disadvantage by urging the Government to change laws and regulations.

With their permission, we sometimes use our clients’ experiences to help National Citizens Advice create evidence reports and case studies which are incredibly insightful and powerful at showing the human story behind the statistical data that we generate.

These are the kinds of stories you may see featured in newspapers, on the radio or on TV news programmes - in fact, the media often come to Citizens Advice for information and to ask to talk to clients who are willing for their individual stories to be featured in this way.

We have our own Research and Campaigns team at Broxbourne who are busy reviewing the impact policies and practices have on our clients at a local level.

We carry out local research and then campaign on issues with a more local impact.  For example, our research showed that Holdbrook had a high proportion of people who were not accessing the Covid vaccine. Information from the council and NHS confirmed this.

As  we operate in the area where the take up rate was low, we took direct action to address this health inequality and, working with the NHS and environmental health, we opened our offices on two Saturdays giving the NHS access to our facilities to run a Covid clinic.