REGISTERED COMPANY NUMBER: 03191085 (England and Wales)

REGISTERED CHARITY NUMBER: 1056102

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Reference and Administrative Details  

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Chairman's Report  

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Report of the Trustees  

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Report of the Independent Auditors  

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Statement of Financial Activities  

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Balance Sheet  

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Cash Flow Statement  

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Notes to the Cash Flow Statement  

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Notes to the Financial Statements  

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TRUSTEES

A K Arain

A H Bridges

M C E Canning

H L M Du Quesnay CBE Chair

R A L French Treasurer

C J Powell Vice Chair

D E Whitfield

D Cook

C F Hoyes

J Jacobs

C A Boston

COMPANY SECRETARY

H Cook

REGISTERED OFFICE

66 Devonshire Road

Cambridge

Cambridgeshire

CB1 2BL

REGISTERED COMPANY NUMBER

03191085 (England and Wales)

REGISTERED CHARITY NUMBER

1056102

AUDITORS

Knights Lowe Limited

Eldo House

Kempson Way

Suffolk Business Park

Bury St Edmunds

Suffolk

IP32 7AR

SOLICITORS

Tees Laws

Titan House

Castle Park

Cambridge

CB3 0AY

BANKERS

Barclays Bank Plc

11 St Andrews Street

Cambridge

CB2 3AA

PRESIDENT

Lady Chadwyck-Healey

PATRONS

Dr Pamela Raspe

Cazzy Walshe

The year 2025/26 has been a year of reflection and planning for the future of Cambridge and District Citizens Advice (CDCA). The Annual General Meeting in November 2025 saw CDCA formally adopt a revised Articles of Association document. Our refreshed Trustee Board and Senior Leadership Team have overseen the completion of three comprehensive reviews; a new approach to our service delivery mode, consideration of how our future workforce will meet the demand for our services, and the future of our current building on Devonshire Road.  The outcomes and recommendations of these reviews are the building blocks for our strategic approach for 2027-28.

At the same time, we have experienced significant financial challenges resulting in a deficit of £154,789 with our reserves dropping to £937,191 at the close of the 2025/26 financial year (unrestricted reserves excluding the value of the building amount to £198,146) . Under the leadership of our Treasurer Richard French, Trustees and the Senior Leadership Team have placed a sharp focus on recovery with a rigorous strategy to rebuild the general reserves to at least £150,000 within three years. It has been reassuring to see how well we work together in tough times as well as favourable ones and I wish to thank them all for their commitment. We have also been supported magnificently by our key partners, Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council, who have both made the decision to move to a three-year funding model and to make their grants on an unrestricted basis. Cambridgeshire County Council has extended its support by awarding us £200,000 for the continuation of the Income Maximisation project with four FTE workers providing personalized budgeting support.  We are also grateful to the Penchant Foundation for an annual grant of £20,000, a mark of their confidence in the importance of our work.

Never has it been more important to maintain CDCA's focus on its core values and purpose. In providing independent advice to those in need on their rights and responsibilities, we have continued to build on the work done over recent years to work in partnership with a wide range of voluntary sector organisations. We have an unparalleled team of staff and volunteers whose commitment, knowledge and skills make CDCA an organisation that is widely valued in the community: by clients, some of whom are facing the most painful and distressing circumstances; by partners and funders whose work we complement and support; and by the general public who take comfort in knowing that we will be there to help them in their darkest hours.

A key feature of the way that the pattern of work of local Citizens Advice services is changing is the importance of increasing the range of our partnerships. So, we were delighted to receive funding in June 2025 from Cambridgeshire, Peterborough and South Lincolnshire (CPSL) Mind as part of the WorkWell (Cambridge City, Cambridgeshire East, Cambridgeshire South & Royston) Programme. As part of this project, we receive referrals for individuals who are experiencing barriers to work due to ill health. The clients referred to this project might be struggling to seek paid employment due to underlying financial pressures as well as a lack of self-confidence. The advisers assigned to the project assisted clients with improving their income, accessing additional benefits and tax credits and dealing with debts.

Other local advice projects in 2025/26 included:

o £89,000 funding for the continuation of the Foodbank project in partnership with Cambridge City Foodbank. The project involves 1.6 FTE staff who between them visit all foodbanks and Fairbite shops in South Cambridgeshire and Cambridge every other week, with the aim of addressing the underlying financial issues that are causing people to be in food poverty. Working closely with Cambridge City Foodbank, the project has been successful in supporting more than 300 clients and helping them to gain more than £478K in additional income

o £51,500 funding for the continuation of the Change Grow Live project with 1 FTE worker supporting recovering

substance abusers in CGL centres, giving financial and benefits advice

o £37,000 funding for our Major Trauma Signposting project at Addenbrookes hospital which supports patients and their families with advice and support from Cardinal Management

o £19,000 of funding for our money advice service for Sawston residents funded by John Huntington's Charity

o £2400 funding from C3 church to provide a monthly drop-in advice service

o £2000 funding from Rethink Carers to provide welfare benefits outreach appointments

We continued to deliver national Citizens Advice contracts including the Help Through Hardship project (HTH) funded by the Trussell Trust, the Energy Advice Programme (EAP) and Energy Outreach Programme (EOP). All three of these projects enable us to continue supporting clients with food and fuel poverty concerns both locally and nationally.

The funding from the Chadwyck-Healey Foundation enables us to continue to deliver our digital inclusion project. The aim of the project is to provide clients with the digital skills, access and equipment required to navigate an increasingly digitally-focused world. We have been able to provide reconditioned mobile phones and laptops as well as SIM cards to clients who do not have access to digital equipment, as well as supporting them to learn new skills and build their confidence.

The scale of need we are addressing is illustrated by the number of clients we have supported over the past year, many affected by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis which is impacting on a far wider range of people than we have seen previously. We continued to offer advice sessions via telephone, email, webchat and face to face channels to our clients and we have sought to extend the range of our outreach sessions in the community, offering planned appointments, and some traditional drop-in opportunities at several locations across Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire.

During 2025/26 we undertook 35,663 client activities including advice, assisted information and casework. Those clients gained £10.1m income (an increase from £6.9m in 2024/25 across a similar portfolio of funded projects). The total number of issues raised by clients was 44,671. The majority of these related to welfare benefits advice including Personal Independence Payments and Universal Credit, as well as debts relating to fuel and council tax arrears.

Our monitoring of equity, diversity and inclusion shows we continue to attract a younger age group of clients by offering a wider range of digital advice channels. We see a higher rate of females to males seeking advice. With regards to ethnicity, minority ethnic clients made up 25% of our client base. 56% of our clients have a disability or long-term health condition. We have maintained our Disability Confident employer status, and we have invested in providing staff, volunteers and trustees with mental health first aiders and a range of wellbeing activities.

A key part of the mission of Citizens Advice is to try and help improve the policies and practices that affect people's lives. We do this by ensuring we collect data and our interactive dashboard is available to MPs, funders and other policy makers. We regularly brief our local MPs and local Councillors on local need and the impact of policy on the local community. We are also being funded by the local Voluntary Sector Network to attend various health committee meetings and to bring together datasets showing the impact the voluntary and community sector has on population health and wellbeing. The scale of this contribution is so often significantly underestimated. We have developed a Research and Campaigns working group made up of staff, volunteers and Trustees to lead on our social policy work. The working group have identified three main areas of focus - homelessness, debt awareness, and budgeting skills. They have developed a clear plan outlining how we will build our understanding of each priority area and identify opportunities for targeted campaigns over the year.

We are fortunate to have a dedicated and skilled Trustee Board. During 2025/26, Trustees participated in two successful away days focused on strategic planning for 2026-28 as well as rationalising the current committee structure. Trustees agreed to focus the committee structure on two committees - Finance & Risk and HR & Remuneration with an Appeals committee to meet when required. The strategic planning session focused on reviewing the recommendations of the recent reviews and shaping this into a robust strategic and operational plan for the next two years.

At the heart of Cambridge and District Citizens Advice are the staff and volunteers who are dedicated to achieving good outcomes for our clients and do so with enormous skill and compassion. This year we have invested in new training and development plans for both staff and volunteers and sought to deliver more effective communication with them. We have also invested in more well-being support in recognition of the isolating pressures of remote working and increasingly distressing calls and demands from clients. Sadly, there are occasions when staff and volunteers are subject to inappropriate and even offensive abuse from clients, in just the same way that we hear in the media of the denigration of other public servants. We do our utmost to support them.  On behalf of the Trustee Board, I would like to thank them all for their ongoing commitment and for everything they have achieved this year.

I want to pay particular tribute to the leadership Helen Cook has given in what has been a busy and demanding year. We are living through challenging times, when organisations have to be agile and respond to change that is not always welcome and seldom easy to predict. Helen has made it a priority to develop the culture of the workplace to equip people not only with the skills and knowledge they need but with team spirit, empathy and capacity to collaborate that will ensure that the organisation's success by creating space for development and shared learning. I am grateful to Helen, the Senior Leadership Team, and all those with leadership responsibilities, in the role they have played shaping the new strategic direction built on the reviews led by members of the Senior Leadership team.

Additionally, the senior team have played a key role in building new partnerships, connecting with local companies and raising funds for several new projects and workstreams, providing paid employment opportunities for a number of volunteers.

We look forward with confidence and optimism to the year ahead. Among our key aims are plans to:

o To rebuild our unrestricted reserves and reduce financial fragility through increased fundraising activity, donations and cost savings.

o To maximise the value and efficiency of the Devonshire Road office without disposal by exploring opportunities to generate further rental income and utilising the existing space more effectively for delivering our services.

o To serve more clients by refining the efficient delivery of services across our advice channels without dropping below quality thresholds.

o To utilise new and emerging technology including AI tools to increase reach and efficiency.

o To reach under-served groups and locations more effectively by analysing our client data and available external data sources (e.g. LIFT) and expanding our outreach provision (linked to number 3).

o To be proactive about external risks and opportunities specifically in relation to Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) and changes to the Integrated Care Board.

We shall seize the opportunity for innovation and improvement in order to offer the best possible service to our clients; to build stronger partnerships; to explore new funding streams; and support, encourage and celebrate the achievements of our staff and volunteers and Trustees. I am proud to be part of their work.

Heather DuQuesnay CBE

Chair of the Trustee Board

Date

The Trustees present their annual report together with the audited financial statements of the Cambridge and District

Citizens Advice Bureau for the year 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. The Annual Report serves the purposes of both a

Trustees' report and a directors' report under company law. The Trustees confirm that the Annual Report and financial

statements of the charitable company comply with the current statutory requirements, the requirements of the

charitable company's governing document and the provisions of the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP)

applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the

UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS102) (effective 1 January 2019).

Since the Charity qualifies as small under section 382 of the Companies Act 2006, the Strategic Report required of

medium and large companies under the Companies Act 2006 (Strategic Report and Directors' Report) Regulations 2013

has been omitted.

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Objectives and aims

Significant activities

Public benefit

Volunteers

STRATEGIC REPORT

Future plans

STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

Governing document

Recruitment and appointment of new trustees

Organisational structure

GOING CONCERN

The Trustees consider that there are no material uncertainties about Cambridge and District Citizens Advice Bureau's ability to continue as a going concern. All payments are up to date and income and expenditure are being closely monitored on a monthly basis such that costs will be reduced if income is not sufficient to cover them and that restricted funding is closely monitored to ensure that budgets are met. Additionally, there is no unplanned expenditure from reserves. With regard to the following year (and most years), the most significant areas of uncertainty are the level of grant funding which needs to be raised each and every year because most grants and contracts are received on an annual basis.

During the year banking covenants have been breached but the bank remains supportive. The trustees have no reason to believe that the company will not continue to service the debt therefore have not recorded any adjustments within these financial statements.

STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES' RESPONSIBILITIES

AUDITORS

The auditors, Knights Lowe Limited, will be proposed for re-appointment at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting.

In accordance with the Financial Procedures of the charity, CDCA's Trustee Board is responsible for

recommending the appointment of an auditor at the annual general meeting prior to the year end, with the

Treasurer and CEO responsible for reviewing this appointment.

Report of the trustees, incorporating a strategic report, approved by order of the board of trustees, as the company directors, on 1 October 2026 and signed on the board's behalf by:

R A L French - Trustee

Opinion

Basis for opinion

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees' use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the charitable company's ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The trustees are responsible for the other information. The other information comprises the information included in the Annual Report, other than the financial statements and our Report of the Independent Auditors thereon.

Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

In connection with our audit of the financial statements, our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether this gives rise to a material misstatement in the financial statements themselves. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.  We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

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the information given in the Report of the Trustees for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and

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the Report of the Trustees has been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the Report of the Trustees.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters where the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

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adequate accounting records have not been kept or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or

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the financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or

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certain disclosures of trustees' remuneration specified by law are not made; or

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we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit.

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the Statement of Trustees' Responsibilities, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable company's ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue a Report of the Independent Auditors that includes our opinion.  Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below:

- the engagement partner ensured that the engagement team collectively had the appropriate competence, capabilities and skills to identify or recognise non-compliance with applicable laws and regulations;

- we identified the laws and regulations applicable to the company through discussions with directors and other management, and from our commercial knowledge and experience of the companies operating sector;

-we focused on specific laws and regulations which we considered may have a direct material effect on the financial statements or the operations of the company, including the Companies Act 2006, taxation legislation, data protection, anti-bribery, employment, environmental and health and safety legislation;

- we assessed the extent of compliance with the laws and regulations identified above through making enquiries of management and inspecting legal correspondence; and

- identified laws and regulations were communicated within the audit team regularly and the team remained alert to instances of non-compliance throughout the audit.

We assessed the susceptibility of the company's financial statements to material misstatement, including obtaining an understanding of how fraud might occur, by:

- making enquiries of management as to where they considered there was susceptibility to fraud, their knowledge of actual, suspected and alleged fraud;

- considering the internal controls in place to mitigate risks of fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations.

To address the risk of fraud through management bias and override of controls, we:

- performed analytical procedures to identify any unusual or unexpected relationships;

- tested journal entries to identify unusual transactions;

- assessed whether judgements and assumptions made in determining the accounting estimates were indicative of potential bias and

- investigated the rationale behind significant or unusual transactions.

In response to the risk of irregularities and non-compliance with laws and regulations, we designed procedures which included, but were not limited to:

- agreeing financial statement disclosures to underlying supporting documentation;

- reading the minutes of meetings of those charged with governance;

- enquiring of management as to actual and potential litigation and claims;

- reviewing correspondence with HMRC, relevant regulators and the company's legal advisors.

There are inherent limitations in our audit procedures described above. The more removed that laws and regulations are from financial transactions, the less likely it is that we would become aware of non-compliance. Auditing standards also limit the audit procedures required to identify non-compliance with laws and regulations to enquiry of the directors and other management and the inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any.

Material misstatements that arise due to fraud can be harder to detect than those that arise from error as they may involve deliberate concealment or collusion.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council's website at www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our Report of the Independent Auditors.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company's members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company's members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditors' report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company's members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

James Knights BSc FCA (Senior Statutory Auditor)

for and on behalf of Knights Lowe Limited

Eldo House

Kempson Way

Suffolk Business Park

Bury St Edmunds

Suffolk

IP32 7AR

9 October 2026