Our History

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 adviser herself.

​

With its success came the formation of a management committee, resulting in much needed funding. The centre took on two paid advisers 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 2nd January 1986 Bestwood Advice Centre moved to 21 Gainsford Crescent, a location much better suited to the increased demand for welfare rights 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 14th January  by the Honourable Joan Taylor.

​

The advice centre became a registered charity in 1988 and in 2007 it was a founding member of Advice Nottingham, a partnership of independent advice agencies across Nottingham City, 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 on a wide variety of issues linked to welfare benefits, debt and fuel debt. These are the same principles as those on which we base our current work.