Welcome to new trustee Sarah Slowe

We’re very happy to welcome Sarah Slowe to the management committee. Sarah has a lot of experience in funding applications, which (for better or worse) takes up a large amount of CHAC energy.

Sarah has previously joined Team CHAC for the KM Bike Ride, and now that she’s a member of the management committee she has got straight in there and joined Team CHAC (along with Nick Jackson, Kim Pegg and Rachael Massingham) for this year’s 50 km challenge: please sponsor the team here: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Team/TeamCHAC2019.

KM Big Bike Ride - 28 April 2019

Team CHAC is back! We’re entering a team to take part in the KM Big Bike Ride – join us for a ride or sponsor one of our riders! Click here to find out more about how you can take part or sponsor the team.

Gerald Turley Recognition Award

CHAC manager Paul Wilkinson

We’re very pleased to announce that CHAC’s advice service has been acknowledged with a Gerald Turley Recognition Award. The work undertaken by CHAC was “judged as exceptional”. We’d like to thank the judges and all those who nominated us.

The Gerald Turley Recognition Awards were appraised and administrated by Funding for All whom Gerald Turley was the first patron and supporter of.

Funding to continue providing housing advice in Herne Bay and Whitstable

We’re delighted to announce that the National Lottery Community Fund has awarded us just over £7,000 to fund our outreach programme in Herne Bay and Whitstable for 1 year from 1 April 2019.

CHAC provides housing advice in Herne Bay on a Wednesday morning, and in Whitstable on a Wednesday afternoon. This saves residents of Herne Bay and Whitstable expensive bus fares, as well as the time out needed to travel to Canterbury. In 2017/18 we advised and helped 175 households in Herne Bay and 125 households in Whitstable.

The award of £7,287 from the National Lottery Community Fund’s Awards for All programme will keep our Outreach Project running for another year helping prevent homelessness and reduce poverty in Herne Bay and Whitstable. As part of the project, CHAC will also be launching a pilot service user involvement project, whereby CHAC can develop its services in Herne Bay and Whitstable to best meet the needs of our clients.

The Herne Bay outreach takes place 10am-12pm at the Citizens Advice office in Herne Bay, and 1pm-3pm in the Whitstable Umbrella Centre, every Wednesday. No booking necessary. Click here for more information on contacting CHAC.

Thanks to Whitehead Monckton Charitable Foundation

We’d like to thank the Whitehead Monckton Charitable Foundation for granting CHAC just over £1,000 which will will be used to purchase the Encyclopaedia of Housing Law & Practice, a crucial resource for the provision of up to date housing advice.

“In order to continue to provide our housing advice service CHAC needs to have access to the latest legal resources. Unfortunately these can be very expensive, and for a small advice charity is a major annual investment. We’re very grateful for the support of Whitehead Monckton Charitable Foundation, which will help us continue to give advice to our many clients.”

— Nick Piska, Chair of CHAC

The Whitehead Monckton Charitable Foundation supports a wide range of charities based in or operating mainly within Kent, and was set up by Whitehead Monckton Solicitors based in Kent.

A happy new year for CHAC

It’s a happy new year at CHAC as we’re delighted to announce that RG Hills Charitable Trust has very generously donated £2,500 to allow CHAC to continue offering our services in the Canterbury district.

But if that wasn’t enough good news, we also received news that the Access to Justice Foundation has granted us £10,000 starting from January 2019 to help local people threatened with homelessness.

This funding is crucial to keeping CHAC open and providing advice to some of the most vulnerable in the Canterbury district. We’ve very grateful to both organisations.

Charity wine tasting raises £565 for CHAC

A charity wine tasting event held at Whitstable Castle on 6 December raised £565 for CHAC. The event was organised by CHAC trustee Peter Ash and was hosted by Henry Rymill, formerly of Tankerton Wine Room and now of ‘Wine Underground’.

Tasters tried 8 different wines from around the world, including a sparkling wine from Haywards Heath, a Chablis and a New Zealand pinot noir. The generous tasters also bought up raffle tickets, prizes for which included £150 of high street vouchers, kindly donated by Martin Blackley; a beautiful print of Whitstable beach huts from Light & Imagination, specialists in photography; a voucher from Annie’s Bistro, a new bistro in Whitstable; a back massage from Pure; cocktails from Rock Lodge; bottled cider from Biddendens; and donations from trustees of CHAC.

The evening also included a ‘mystery wine’ round where tasters were invited to ‘pay to play’ a game of blind tasting, which CHAC chair Nick Piška won by identifying the Australian Shiraz from South Australia. This was the second wine tasting hosted by Henry for the benefit of CHAC, following a great event in May 2018.

Organiser Peter Ash said:

Christmas is a busy and expensive time for most people so it was really good of everyone who turned up to support the event. We also had great support for the raffle from individuals and local businesses. Henry hosted an evening that everyone really enjoyed with some great wines and fabulous English cheeses and even more important than the fun we had was that we raised £565 for CHAC, thanks again for all those who supported the event.

CHAC would like to thank all those who attended and those who donated prizes to the raffle, and especially Henry for hosting another great night. The money raised contributes to CHAC’s work preventing homelessness.

If you’d like to know more about Wine Underground or be added to its mailing list, please contact Henry Rymill on henry@hlrymill.co.uk.

CHAC in the news!

The Canterbury Journal has published an article about the difficulties facing tenants on housing benefits finding homes in the private sector. Neasa MacErlean’s report draws on the facts and figures found in CHAC’s latest annual report.

Click here to read the article.

Annual Report 2017-18 published

On Monday our AGM approved the annual report for financial year 2017-2018, which is now available here.

While it was a tough year financially, it ended with the start of a new partnership with Canterbury Citizens Advice. However, despite an excellent year of fundraising, exceeding our target, we again entered the next financial year needing to raise a significant sum in order to continue providing increasingly needed housing advice in the Canterbury area.

See how you could help CHAC.

New CHAC website launched!

We’re delighted to welcome you to our new website. It provides information for clients on how, where and when they can get our help, and information for funders and the general public on the work we do and how to support CHAC. It includes information on the trustees and pages of ‘case studies’ which are indicative of the work CHAC does. We’re now working on a new ‘facts and figures’ page which will provide information on the housing and homelessness situation in Canterbury, which we intend to update at regular intervals and hope it will become an essential resource for understanding housing and homelessness in the area.

We’d like to thank Kent IT Consultancy (KITC) for their work, support and training in designing the new website and getting it launched - in particular Ben Williams, Hubert Dziedziczak, Sean Patterson, James Gander and Jason Marshall. This work was provided pro-bono, for which we are extremely grateful.