Mayor of London provides extra funds for Ealing Advice Service

Photo: Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. 

Ealing Advice Service (EAS) which provides help and advice to around 6,500 residents each year is to recieve an additional £73,000 from the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan to support its work in the borough.

The service, which has been running for more than a decade, offers advice and legal help across a wide range of areas including welfare benefits, debt advice, homelessness, employment, family and immigration.

In a visit to the service, Labour Assembly Member for Ealing & Hillingdon, Bassam Mahfouz said: “During these times when people have been facing increasing challenges with their finances and housing situations, services like these provide a lifeline of free, confidential and independent advice.”

Matthew Coulam, director of EAS explained how the money will help the organisation. He said: “Ealing Advice Service provides advice to around 6,500 residents of the borough every year. Residents often complain that they can’t get through on the phone lines. So we’re looking at increasing capacity on our phone lines, increasing the number of people answering the phones, and also supervision for volunteers on the lines.”

Mr Coulam added: “We also want to focus more on prevention. A lot of Ealing residents come to us when they’re already in crisis. They’re either getting evicted, they’ve got debts, their benefits have stopped. What we want to do is focus more on preventing people from getting to that place in the first place.”

Ealing residents looking for advice can call Ealing Advice Service on on 0208 579 8429 between 10am and 4pm, Monday to Friday.