{"id":10,"date":"2025-01-23T12:31:10","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T12:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/bre\/?page_id=10"},"modified":"2026-08-17T14:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T13:02:11","slug":"about-us","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/citizens-advice\/about-us\/","title":{"rendered":"About us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\t\t About Us\t <\/h1>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n
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We exist to shape a society where people face far fewer problems.<\/p>\n

Our service is delivered by our highly trained people – around 19,000 volunteers and 12,000 staff. We help millions of people every year with free, independent, and expert advice across the broadest range of areas \u2013 from money and debt, to benefits, housing, energy, work, relationships, and so much more.<\/p>\n

The Citizens Advice service is made up of a network of 228 independent local Citizens Advice charities across England, Wales and the Channel Islands, and the national charity. Our role as the national charity is to enable local Citizens Advice members to deliver their services and to run agreed services at a national level, including our website.<\/p>\n

Last year we helped over 2.4 million people one-to-one, by phone, email, webchat or in person. Our advice website had over 31 million page views. This gives us a unique and unmatched understanding of the issues that are affecting people in our society, and insight that is valued by businesses, other charities and the government. That\u2019s why we are The People\u2019s Champion.<\/p>\n

Times are tough for everyone. More people than ever desperately need the empathetic safety and integrated support we offer, but our services are stretched to the limit.<\/p>\n

In this context we are seeking a highly strategic and relational Chief Operating Officer who can strengthen the effectiveness of the whole Citizens Advice system, bringing together strategy and impact, finance and corporate services, people, equity and belonging, and organisational design and development into one integrated leadership portfolio, while working closely with the CEO, Executive Team and Trustees to build the organisational foundations, operating model and capabilities Citizens Advice needs for the future.<\/p>\n

Our Strategic Direction<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Recent years have been a period of particular hardship for the people we support. It is especially worrying to see the rise in the number of people who simply can\u2019t make ends meet and need crisis support in the form of food bank vouchers.<\/p>\n

The successive challenges of COVID-19, the cost-of-living crisis and global instability continue to have deep and widespread ramifications. Against that background, while our service has never been more needed, it has felt more challenging than ever to make a difference – both in terms of how far our advice can go to help people solve their problems, and our ability to meet the increasing demand. However, we continue to be galvanised in doing all we can to support clients in their time of need. And we have been around a long time, with a long history of adapting to difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n

The strategy that we launched in October 2023 faced into the uncertain environment that we operate in. It is a living strategy designed to \u2018meet the moment\u2019, allowing us to respond to the constantly evolving challenges faced by individuals and communities. At its heart are three missions:<\/p>\n

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  • To provide advice fit for the future – so we can be there for people in the ways they need us.<\/li>\n
  • To close the gap – so that marginalised communities are better able to access our service and have a good experience when they do<\/li>\n
  • To take early action – so that fewer people reach crisis.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Our goal is to mobilise our whole service alongside external partners around these three areas, which we believe will make the most difference to the people we\u2019re here for. We are working across local and national boundaries to build innovation networks and surface evidence and intelligence about what works in different contexts so that we can move as one and scale opportunities. To achieve this we need to build strong and interconnected relationships as the foundation for successful collaboration. We are in the first stage of shifting our organisation to work in a missions-based way, and need to increase impact and engagement to realise the full impact. This is a really different way of working for our charity, and we need to bring our whole service and external partners on the journey with us.<\/p>\n

    Our Organisational Context<\/strong><\/h4>\n

    The Chief Operating Officer will play a pivotal and influential part in a broader agenda of transformation at Citizens Advice. As part of our Executive Committee you will partner with colleagues in working through what it means to deliver modern services in a digital age which provide positive client experience across all channels; developing the conditions for success across all organisational domains, from capabilities to design, culture and ways of working.<\/p>\n

    We are still in the early stages of of shifting our organisation to work in a missions-based way, and need to increase impact and engagement to realise the full impact. This is a really different way of working for our charity, and we need to bring our whole service and external partners on the journey with us. The Chief Operating Officer will be central in codesigning how Citizens Advice, as a system, adapts to deliver the missions. This will involve promoting effective collaboration, providing the freedom that a complex and adaptive service requires, and delivering in line with our means.<\/p>\n

    Our commitment to operating as \u201cone system with many leaders\u201d underpins the approach we are taking across the Citizens Advice service. This model enables devolution of choice and influence across the network, and is increasingly upheld by shared principles, common capabilities, and ways of working.<\/p>\n

    Our EDI Agenda<\/strong><\/h4>\n

    Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is of strategic importance within the organisation and recognised as integral to all we do as a service. This is evidenced by our ongoing investment in a dedicated, system-wide EDI department tasked with driving meaningful change across every level of our service.<\/p>\n

    We know that marginalised communities face greater difficulty accessing our advice and they sometimes have a poorer experience when they do. Given the pressures on our service, we need to work hard to ensure that we are reaching those who need us most and putting a real focus on people and communities we want to do better for.<\/p>\n

    We take a social justice approach to our EDI work, which is why we look at how issues in society impact on our clients and we ensure that the diversity of needs among our clients are taken into account. One of our current strategic EDI aims is to improve the access and experience for clients of colour. Our data is clear that a higher proportion of white people using our services said we were easy to access compared to people of colour and that white people are more likely to view Citizens Advice positively. This isn\u2019t good enough and we want to make sure we provide an inclusive, accessible experience for everyone, which is why we are undertaking a range of work to address these race disparities in client experience, we also know that there are lots of people we are not yet reaching or are not yet accessing our services, including disabled people.<\/p>\n

    In our work we seek to prioritise the needs of marginalised people and actively challenge disparities and inequalities both in how we provide our services, but also in how we advocate for change. We are building on recent work supporting more inclusive access for people of colour and disabled people, as well as centring lived experience in the work we do. We also continually review data and insights to keep our focus on new and emerging issues.<\/p>\n

    Central to pursuing our EDI mission is building a diverse and inclusive workforce where\u00a0 everyone has a sense of belonging. This work includes integrating equity throughout the employee experience, particularly in relation to race and disability equity.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-10","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/citizens-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/citizens-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/citizens-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/citizens-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/citizens-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/citizens-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121,"href":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/citizens-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10\/revisions\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/micro.green-park.co.uk\/citizens-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}