Hayes CAB Office, Hayes One Stop, 49-51 Station Road, Hayes, Middlesex UB3 4BE
Visit our office by: Location Map
Train: British Rail - Hayes & Harlington
Bus: 90, 140, 195, E6, H98, U1, U4
Car: On-street parking in local side roads.
Hayes
CAB office is in Hayes Town
centre, in the south-east corner of the borough.
It is an industrial area which has suffered some decline but still has a
substantial number of employers. Many people are employed
at Heathrow Airport. Local housing is a mixture of local authority rented and
owner occupied, with a small private rented sector.
Local unemployment is higher than in the borough as a whole with a
significant proportion of the population being Asian, up to 20% in some local wards. There is also a sizeable Somali refugee community. The bureau is keen to develop its service to both the Asian and Somali
communities, and has based the Somali Project Worker at the Hayes Office.
The office is located within a One Stop where it shares the overall building with the Local Authority and Health Authority. The CAB will continue to be an absolutely independent agency within the One Stop. The CAB has a public access point on the ground floor with staff-only offices on the first and second floors. Wheelchair access is not possible on the first or second floor. The office is located in the middle of Hayes Town near to the British Rail Station and various bus routes.
The Hayes office has several volunteer advisers and paid staff delivering the core service to the public in the course of the year. Our team is diverse in its makeup and clearly reflects the local community we serve. We have a reliable core of committed and capable advisers and a good team spirit that shows itself in lively and productive staff meetings and excellent results for the clients we have advised.
Last year Hayes advisers have brought in £153,970 in financial benefits for our clients. Many other benefits are non-financial but equally as important to our clients, such as assistance in dealing with multiple debt, housing and family problems.
The quality of advice is maintained to Citizens Advice standards and all cases are regularly checked for accuracy.
Like the Uxbridge CAB office we share premises with Hillingdon Council staff. We are fortunate to be in above average premises in the Hayes One Stop that have good disabled access and visibility from the high street.
Hayes is in the ‘regeneration corridor’ of the Hayes/West Drayton SRB area. This means that the problems of under-employment and deprivation among the local communities are officially recognised. A high proportion of our clients are from ethnic minorities, including refugee families headed by women and other newly arrived people with limited understanding of spoken or written English and British bureaucracy.
We have undertaken various social policy work and have actively monitored local housing issues, the issue of Community Care Grants for refugees and racism in the local papers.
‘Demand’ for advice regularly exceeds ‘supply’ at Hayes. Poor and insecure housing, low income and benefits problems are commonplace. Debts tend to be high priority ones such as rent arrears and problems with utility bills. Problems of reuniting families from abroad and, by contrast, separating families due to relationship breakdown are also frequent.
Many of our clients are struggling with exceptional pressures and, with limited means of dealing with them, require a full casework service rather than advice and information.