In a single day in a south London centre, the impact of the cost-of-living crisis is starkly evident, with clients overwhelmed by debt, struggling to pay bills and lost in bureaucracy
When Chris Green, CEO of Citizens Advice Southwark, began his career in the 90s, his workload was mostly helping people with consumer issues – faulty appliances and so on. Once, he assisted a chef who had been sacked, and the restaurant owner refused to return his knives. Green, then a volunteer adviser at the Leeds city centre branch of the charity, went with the chef to recover the tools of his trade.
Today, people seek help for very different problems. The level of need has never been higher. Green and his team of 85 volunteers and 36 full-time staff are the last port of call for the soon-to-be-evicted and people with no food in the fridge. “These are very, very scary times,” he says. “And the worst is yet to be seen.”
