We are pleased to launch a new benefit calculator and a guide to claiming Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Both have been supplied by Turn2us, a national charity offering information and practical help to people facing financial insecurity.
You can find the calculator and the PIP helper in the get advice dropdown of our website.
There have been a couple of changes to our service that we want to tell you about.
Please see our get advice page for full details of all our advice services.
We now have a new way for people to contact us via the WhatsApp messaging app.
Our WhatsApp number is 07990 364992. Please note that this is a messaging service only – calls cannot be answered or returned.
We are happy to announce some new advice surgeries in Coventry! These include new ‘drop-in’ services in Holbrooks and Tile Hill, plus a dedicated Personal Independence Payment (PIP) clinic in partnership with Warwick University Law School. Full details can be found on our ‘get advice‘ pages.
Please continue to keep an eye on our updates as we hope to launch more surgeries in the coming months.
For details of other advice services in Coventry, please visit Citizens Advice Coventry and Central England Law Centre. Both of these services are funded by Coventry City Council to give support across the city.
Thanks to support from several sources, we are pleased to announce that we will be launching some new advice services in 2025.
Full details will be announced after Christmas, but we are pleased to tell you that we are still here and are no longer threatened with closure! Our main website will be updated as soon as services are confirmed.
We would like to thank everyone who sent us messages of support and to all those who have remained confident in our charity through our recent difficulties. This has meant so much to all of staff and volunteers.
We would like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!
With great sadness we need to inform you that, following Coventry City Council’s decision to completely axe our funding, Coventry Independent Advice Service (CIAS) will be unable to take on any new advice cases after 30th September 2024.
We understand that this may create problems for your service users, contacts and the wider community, but without any funding we are unable to commit to future work. We will continue to work with our existing clients and with clients we take on between now and 30th September, but we cannot take new clients after that date unless additional funding can be secured.
You may be aware that Coventry City Council opened a competitive tendering process for a new grant to provide advice services in the city. This process was announced in August with a very short turnaround of approximately 3 weeks. The grant has now been awarded to Citizens Advice (for generalist advice, including welfare benefits and debt) and to Central England Law Centre (for specialist level social welfare work) as part of a new ‘Coventry Advice Service’ strategy.
The new contract is effective from 1st October 2024 with no period of transition or agreements in place for the transfer of work. From that date, you will need to signpost or refer anyone needing advice or support to Citizens Advice or Central England Law Centre, as appropriate.
This outcome may force CIAS to close, ending over 30 years of essential support and guidance from our charity to thousands of Coventry residents alongside the economic benefit of our work to the city.
If you would like to talk to us about how this decision might impact on your organisation, your service users, or how we might work together to secure future funding, please do get in touch.
On behalf of CIAS staff, volunteers and trustees, I would like to thank you for your support and the confidence you have shown in our charity.
Alan Markey
Chief Executive Officer
