Chichester & District Citizens Advice Bureau covers a 300 square-mile area both north and south of the Downs; this is a largely rural area with some quite isolated villages. The population of 106,000 is concentrated mainly in Chichester, Midhurst, Petworth and Selsey with some additional built-up areas around the Witterings. Despite the public perception that this is a well-to-do area with below average unemployment, there are wards of social deprivation in both Chichester and Selsey.

The highest number of enquiries that we deal with generally concern Benefits and Employment, followed by Debt, Housing and Legal Issues. Other issues brought to us concern Consumer, Education, Financial, Health, Immigration, Relationships, Taxes and Travel.

Advisers
All our advisers are highly-trained volunteers, all have completed the basic training course, have undertaken further courses developing knowledge in specific areas (such as benefits, housing or debt), and many will continue to pursue further courses to enable them to offer more specialised advice in selected areas. Our basic training course is certificated and completion of this will count towards other educational qualifications.

We offer a drop-in advice service each week-day from

10.00am to 5.00pm.

Our telephone lines are open each week-day from

10.00am to 4.45pm.

and we will respond to written requests for advice.

We are happy to offer appointments from mid-day onwards to those who are at work and can only attend in their lunch hour. We will also offer appointments to clients with an on-going enquiry who need to return to the Bureau. So far as is practical a case worker will be assigned to on-going cases in order to assure continuity.

Specialists
We offer specialised help in Employment and our two in-Bureau specialists will support and advise clients through the Employment Tribunal process. We have a depth of experience in this subject and are proud of our success rate at Tribunal hearings. Our specialists are available in the Bureau on two days each week to advise on any more complicated Employment matter.
We offer specialised help in Housing matters for three days each week. At the request of the judges of the Chichester Combined Courts we run a Court Desk for Possession hearings where one of our specialist advisers will represent clients at the hearing. We have a Law student volunteer to act as clerk who will undertake any further follow-up work required by clients. Again, the results for our clients represent a 96% success rate in obtaining suspension of any Possession Order.
We also offer specialised help for some Benefit Appeals. Because of the complexity of this work, we cannot take on as many cases as we would like, but have successfully presented clients' cases at Appeal.
Although the experienced generalist advisers remain the backbone of the service we offer, all advisers who so wish are given the opportunity to undertake further training with a view to specialisation.

Supervision and Support
Our advice team is backed up by paid Advice Session Supervisors who help and support each adviser. Session Supervisors are fully trained advisers and, in the Chichester Bureau, have a minimum of two years' experience as an adviser before undertaking further training to become a Session Supervisor. Currently our three Session Supervisors have a total of 28 years' experience between them.

AdviserNet
Our sources of advice are accessed via a continually-updated, Internet-based programme called AdviserNet. We also have access to specialist support, many other legal reference sources, local solicitors, and other statutory and local agencies.

Standards
The Bureau holds the Legal Services Commission Quality Mark and is audited regularly by that body as a condition of retaining the Mark. The national organisation of Citizens Advice also audit the bureaux regularly to cover both Management Practices and Quality of Advice. Passing such audits is a condition of remaining a member of the national organisation.

Access
The Chichester Bureau is situated close to both the bus and railway stations, and there are public car parks close by. All interview rooms are on the ground floor and there is Disabled Access and facilities for disabled people inside the building.
We have access to signers from a local agency for clients with severe hearing difficulties and within the Bureau our advisers speak a total of seven languages, and can write and translate in four. We also have access to documents in some European and East European languages on specific topics to help clients for whom English is not their first language.
We regret that we are unable to offer an e-mail advice service.