There are two equal aims of the Citizens Advice service:

• To provide the advice people need for the problems they face; this means helping individual clients to manage their problems
  
• To improve the policies and practices that affect people's lives; this means helping to prevent similar problems arising for other people both locally and nationally.
  

We provide advice to individual people both by phone and face to face:

• We provide IT support, administration and reception to the bureau and its outreach centres to ensure its smooth running
  
• We support the social policy function by preparing reports on issues raised locally to head office
  
• We raise the profile of the bureau locally
  
• We offer a forms completion service where volunteers visit house-bound clients to assist them in completing forms on which to claim benefits.