Our History
Minutes from a Citizens Advice Bureau committee meeting, Ruislip, 17th February 1940
HRH The Princess Royal visits Citizens Advice Hillingdon, featured in the 1998/99 Annual Report marking 60 years of service
Citizens Advice Hillingdon was constituted under its current name in 2017, but our roots go back much further. In February 1940, a small committee met in a front room in Ruislip to run the local Citizens Advice Bureau, organising a fundraising dance, arranging a telephone line, even borrowing a spare typewriter, whatever it took to keep people advised through the hardship of wartime Britain. That same practical, community-rooted problem-solving is what founded the service in 1939: to make sure people weren't left disadvantaged by not knowing their rights, and to make sure policymakers understood where legislation was letting people down in practice.
That makes us one of the oldest advice services in the London Borough of Hillingdon, and everything that comes with it: decades of trust built one conversation at a time, and institutional knowledge that doesn't exist anywhere else in the borough. In 1998/99, marking 60 years of service, HRH The Princess Royal visited us in person, recognition of exactly the kind of work a committee in a Ruislip front room set out to do in 1940.
Across those decades, one thing hasn't changed: there has always been need. What has changed is its shape. The wartime residents that committee served needed lighting, heating, a telephone line, the basics of getting by. Today's need is different, but no less real, and in many ways more extreme: disability, insecure housing, low-paid work and the cost-of-living crisis rarely arrive one at a time, and people are coming to us with more complex, overlapping problems than ever before. Eight decades on, our founding purpose hasn't changed, even as the organisation around it has grown well beyond a committee and a borrowed typewriter: help people today, and use what you learn to change the systems that fail them tomorrow.
Our Team
CAH is led by a voluntary board of trustees who bring experience across legal practice, finance, HR, community development and public health, alongside a staff team of specialist advisers and a growing network of volunteers. Governance and leadership are central to how we deliver accountable, high-quality advice: we're proud that our board reflects the diversity of the communities we serve, and that leadership here is something we keep actively investing in.
We are an independent local charity and a member of the national Citizens Advice network, accredited by AQA (Advice Quality Standard) and FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), so you can trust that our advice meets recognised standards of quality, confidentiality and accountability.
Our approach:
