QLocal is, ahem, indebted to West Lancashire Debt Advice for this encouraging report from its annual meeting which was attended by local Mayor Liz Savage at Ormskirk Emmanuel Church last Tuesday evening.

Here are the edited highlights from the charity which provides completely free face to face debt advice to people in need working under the umbrella and guidance of Community Money Advice; WLDA was established by churches in West Lancashire and Ormskirk Deanery. Working under the supervision of Community MoneyAdvice (CMA), a national Christian money advice charity, our affiliation provides us with the support, policies and procedures to ensure we are operating in accordance with legal requirements and national standards.

We are now authorised and regulated by Financial Conduct Authority and during 2016 have continued to have appropriate insurance through Advice UK. We are run entirely by volunteers who come from a number of local churches, so we are ecumenical in nature.

All our volunteers complete an application process of a form, interview and references before attending two days of mandatory training run by CMA. We now have 11 volunteers, all of whom have completed the 2 day debt advice training and the majority have completed the 3rd day of training which became available through CMA in 2016 along with sitting an online exam and in so doing have achieved Money Advice Service accredited Level 3 General Debt Advice certificate.

One volunteer, Rev Rick Preston has resigned over the last year due to work commitments. I thank him for his involvement with WLDA and hope that his time with us will assist his involvement with debt advice ministry in the future.

Volunteers commit to offering a minimum of 3 hours per week to the service. For those volunteering as debt advisors this involves working directly with clients offering face to face debt advice and administrative work including communicating with creditors on the client’s behalf. There is also the position of administrator who does not work directly with clients but plays a vital role in making sure that the service runs smoothly, keeping checks on debt advisors that electronic and paper records are being kept up to date and to high standard, dealing with post, emails and generally facilitating the work of the debt advisors. Volunteers are also involved in building links with other services, publicity and dealing with premises issues. A management committee of 8 oversees WLDA, making key decisions, devising policies and procedures, developing plans for the future and ensuring the service runs as well as possible and is compliant with all legal requirements. Currently the management committee is made up of 7 of the volunteers and Dave Mutch from Ormskirk Christian Fellowship.

The major event this year has been move in our venue from the Boiler Room in Burscough Street to Emmanuel Church in October 2016. The use of the Boiler Room had kindly been given by Ormskirk Christian Fellowship since we started the debt advice service in February 2013. However, on reviewing the leasing of this building last year, Ormskirk Christian Fellowship decided that it was no longer fulfilling their needs while proving a heavy financial drain and therefore decided to give up the lease of this building at the end of October 2016.

We are indebted to Ormskirk Christian Fellowship for the provision of premises for over 3 years. We were delighted that Emmanuel Church were able to offer us accommodation with a room adjacent to Langham Hall and storage space for our files etc. and our grateful thanks go to Emmanuel for this provision. We have had to change our sessions a little to fit in with other activities taking place at Emmanuel and volunteers availability and so now offer sessions on a Tuesday evening, Thursday afternoon and depending on volunteer availability we have intermittently also run alternate Saturday mornings session. Our sessions are mainly through pre-booked appointments although we still offer a drop in session on a Thursday afternoon. We continue to have administration session on a Thursday morning and Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon.

The service we offer to clients is to work with them in looking closely at their income and expenditure in order to draw up a Common Financial Statement, which can then be used to make repayment offers to creditors. With the client’s authority, we negotiate with creditors on their behalf in order to set up manageable and realistic repayment plans that are as fair as possible to both parties. We do not handle any money on behalf of clients. Initial repayment offers are often only £1 per month for non- priority debts while we help clients to maximise their income and minimise their expenditure. Once the debts have stopped mounting up, we are able to work with clients to look at potential long term solutions for their debt problems. This may be negotiating with creditors for full and final payment settlements, setting up debt management plans where they pay agreed amount each month towards repayment of their debt with no further interest being added to the debt, or looking at other possible debt solutions such as Debt Relief Orders (DROs), Individual Voluntary Agreements (IVAs) and bankruptcy. We are not able to apply for DROs and IVAs as a centre, but can refer clients on to approved organisations to support them if they choose one of these options.

Since opening in February 2013, we have had over 70 face to face contacts plus a number of telephone enquiries. During 2016 we have had contacted with 11 new clients and 26 others whose cases are ongoing at the end of 2016. We have had fewer new clients this year than last – 11 versus 21. This may be because we have not actively advertised our service in any way during the course of the year due to uncertainty regarding our location as discussed above.

As was mentioned in last year’s annual report, it continues to be the case that not all clients engage fully with the process and sadly a number of those who we could help decide not to follow through for various reasons; we always follow these clients up with phone calls and letters and assure them they are welcome to come back to us for help and advice. However, we have also seen a significant number of ‘success stories’ where clients are now following, or working towards, repayment plans which will eventually lead to them becoming debt free. We have also, on a number of occasions, managed to negotiate with creditors to reduce or even write off some debts. It is very rewarding to see the relief and return of hope that clients experience when the weight of creditors ‘chasing’ them is lifted. A number of the cases we are dealing with are very complex and require hours of meetings and work to sort out often many years of unpaid debts.

We currently have 37 ‘live’ clients; for others their file has been closed either because we have done all we can do for their case, or they have ceased engaging with us. We have a number of clients who are now debt free which is wonderful and received a donation from one of these clients to support the ongoing provision of the service which was extremely generous of them and a great encouragement to the volunteers.

Our active clients owe in total over £570,000 - which ranges from a few hundred pounds owed to one creditor to many thousands of pounds to multiple creditors. We have to keep all records for 6 years and it is possible that clients whom we have finished working with for now may return to us in the future.

Over the past year we have continued to work with other agencies in the area, most of whom we now take referrals from or refer to. These agencies include The Foodbank, Age UK, West Lancashire Borough Council, Disability Advice West Lancashire, Lancashire County Council Welfare Rights, Citizens Advice Bureau and West Lancs Council for Voluntary Services. We were also approached by those providing the local Princes Trust programme regarding delivery of a money management education session for the young people on the course and I am very grateful to Brian Hardisty who undertook to deliver this session in November. While money education is not a primary aim of WLDA, we are keen to try to support this where possible in the hopes of avoiding people running into problems with debt and helping those who have at an early stage and look forward to working with the Princes Trust and others in the future.

As an organisation we continue to be on a steep learning curve and have made time for sessions to learn from each other and also outside agencies. We receive regular updates from CMA and relevant agencies and continue to run relevant training sessions for our volunteers. This year CMA has developed a further training day after which it is possible for advisors who have attended all 3 training days to undertake an online test. If there are successful in passing it then they are awarded a Money Advice Service approved Level 3 General Debt Advice accreditation certificate. 10 of our volunteers have attended the 3rd training day in June of this year and most have sat the online exam as so been awarded this certificate.

I attended the CMA national conference in October 2016 in Shrewsbury which in addition to providing 2 sessions of education on Financial Conduct Authority rules which apply to our service, provided the opportunity to network with other debt advice services and share ideas and solutions to problems encountered in delivering a voluntary debt advice service.

Although we are currently settled in a room adjacent to Langham Hall at Emmanuel church, we continue to seek God’s guidance for our longer term premises. Until October 2016 the Foodbank, Street Pastors and Debt Advice all worked from the Boiler Room. However it did not prove possible for us to move together to the same premises and so the Food Bank is now operating from Church House at Ormskirk Parish Church and Street Pastors use AGE UK building in Moorgate as their base. It is possible that alternative accommodation may become available at a financially viable amount to enable all 3 ministries to move to the same venue again. We continue to explore the options but are in the meantime very grateful to Emmanuel Church for accommodating us.

As we see more clients, many of whom have complex circumstances, we have to spend increasing time reviewing client files and ensuring all necessary information is carefully recorded. This now takes up a considerable amount of some of our advisors’ time, particularly ensuring that we continue to abide by all the FCA rules and regulations. We are very grateful to Dave Sharples who undertakes a large amount of administration and look forward to others joining the team to support him in this work in the coming year.

I mentioned last year that we were to face the challenge of moving away from common financial statement as the central financial information collection form for our clients to an alternative form called the Standard Financial Statement which is the tool that Money Advice Service has developed in consultation with a number of debt advice organisations and will provide a standard format to creditors rather than the 4 types of form which are currently in use. As all our processed to date including the software system - Catalyst - which is provided free of charge to us by CMA will require redesigning to enable completion of this alternative form. The move to this alternative has not been enforced as quickly as it was initially planned and Money Advice Service is no longer in existence. However it does seem likely that we will in the longer term require to move to this and to this end CMA are planning appropriate update of Catalyst software. In December 2016 the application form for DROs has changed to require the income and expenditure to be inputted under this new format with has added work to the process of completing DRO paperwork.

We continue to organize and attend relevant training events. In the near future we will be undertaking individual advisor reviews which not only provide opportunity for individual feedback to volunteers but also the opportunity for advisors to comment on the parts of our service which they consider work will and those that work less well and suggestions for improvements.

We also hope to continue to strengthen links with local agencies so that we are able to work together and mutually support each other.

We are most grateful to the churches, agencies and individuals who have supported us through provision of premises, prayer, and financial giving. All of this support has been invaluable in helping us to continue to offer this debt advice service to people in need. We would like to record our particular gratitude to County Councillors Hennessy, Gibson and Dereli who very generously supported our training day through their local county councilor grants and Christ Church Aughton which has continued to financially supported us; to the clients who are now debt free and chose to show their gratitude through a donations to WLDA; to Ormskirk Christian Fellowship and Emmanuel Methodist United Reform for the provision of affordable premises. Lastly I would like to thank all those who volunteer with WLDA, for their dedication to our clients and the fantastic job that they do.

Rikki Abernethy, Chair of West Lancashire Debt Advice

For more in its work, click here: http://www.westlancashiredebtadvice.org.uk/

So many people are in debts now. One of my friends is working for https://www.frontline-collections.co...bt-collection/ and he says that he has plenty of work. People get too many credits and that's sad. Taking credits is good for the economy but we shouldn't abuse it