Phone : 0115 962 6519
Email : admin@bestwoodadvice.org.uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bestwoodadvice.org.uk
Our Mission Statement
Bestwood Advice Centre is committed to providing free and confidential
Social Welfare Rights and Debt advice and support to the communities
of Local Authority Area 2 – Bestwood and Basford Wards – in a fair,
comprehensive and impartial manner. We adhere to our Equality and
Diversity Policy to ensure that no group or sector of people is
discriminated against.
About Us
Bestwood Advice Centre first came about in the early 1980s under the vision of
Vicar Eddie Neale. Starting out with a pair of probation service workers running a
weekly surgery from a makeshift office at the St Matthew's Church on the Bestwood
estate.
Before long a volunteer Sheila was running drop in advice sessions for
welfare rights. The weekly sessions soon became four days a week and she
had taken on a volunteer assistant to help with the admin, fast forward a few months
and the assistant had started acting as an advisor herself!
With its success came the formation of a management committee,
resulting in much needed funding. The centre took on two paid advisors Michelle and Stephen. By this time space was getting fairly tight at St Matthew's due to the large number of different agencies also using the advice centre space and an application was put to the council to find more adequate space
On the 2nd January 1986 the Bestwood Advice Centre moved to 21 Gainsford Crescent, a location much better suited to the increased demand for welfare advice. The office was situated in a converted council house in the middle of the community it served and provided the additional space needed for the centre's work. Officially the centre was opened for business on January 14th by the Honourable Joan Taylor.
The advice centre became a registered charity in 1987 and in 2007
it was a founding member of Advice Nottingham, a partnership of
the independent advice services across Nottingham, working
together to provide the best advice provisions across the city.
Over the course of its lifetime the centre has helped thousands of
people through offering independent and impartial advice for a wide
variety of issues linked to benefits, welfare rights, debt and fuel
related costs. These are the same
principles as those on which we base our current work, still opening twice a week for drop in, with an additional session at Basford library.
Additionally we meet existing clients at other times from Monday to Thursday and offer home visits to clients unable to get to the centre.
A lot has changed in the past 30 years, but we are still here, Bestwood Advice Centre shortly after opening on Gainsford Crescent in 1986 (left) and today (right)