Ashford Advice are part of the HLPAS scheme, we can help at our offices or in court

The following venues are open in Ashford providing food banks and other services, please check each listing for services offered.

Ashford Advice Seabrooke House, Church Road, Ashford

Food Bank vouchers for FareShare outlets in Ashford from 9.30am to 11am Monday to Friday (Details of outlets and opening times are on the voucher)

Vinnies Diner, Bright City Church, Bank Street, Ashford.

Free hot lunch, pudding, tea or coffee and food bank available.  The lunch is for anyone, whether rich or poor! from 11.30 – 1.30 pm on Mondays

Open Arms, Ashford Community Church, 54 Francis Road, Ashford

Free hot meal for homeless and vulnerable people. Tuesday from 10 am – 1 pm. Food bank also available

Salvation Army, 115 Cudworth Road, South Willesborough, Ashford TN24 0BE

Food Bank 10am – 12pm on a Friday

Community Fridge – Peoples Pantry Repton Connect Community Centre

STEP 1

If you are in need of food or hygiene items, check out our website for the list of free items we have in stock

STEP 2

Call or email us and request the items you need

STEP 3

We’ll arrange a time slot for you to come and collect them from Repton Connect Community Centre.

We’ll leave the items outside the door for you.

NO RULES, NO FUSS, NO REFERRALS.

If you need something, you’re welcome to request it.We haven’t forgotten people who aren’t able to leave their house. Just contact us and we’ll try to help.

If you would like to request items, or make a donation, please call 01233 808023 or email: info@reptonct.uk

Ofgem will confirm the price cap on the unit costs of gas and electricity from 1 April to 30 June 2024 on Friday 23 February.

Cornwall Insight has published its final energy price cap prediction for the next quarter, with an expected reduction of £293 from the current price cap level of £1,928 to £1,635. The forecasted reduction is subject to additional costs yet to be confirmed by Ofgem

From 1 January 2024 the price for energy a typical household who use gas and electricity and pay by Direct Debit went up by £94. This took the price cap from £1,834 to £1,928 per year.

From 1 January 2024, for a typical user paying by direct debit, the unit rate is 29p/kWh for electricity and 7p/kWh for gas. The average daily standing charge will be 53 p/day for electricity and 30 p/day for gas.

Ofgem has robust rules in place to help people in vulnerable situations, and suppliers are obliged to offer payment plans and direct customers to available support. 

The price cap is a cap on a unit of gas and electricity, with standing charges taken into account. It is not a cap on customers’ overall energy bills, which will still rise or fall in line with their energy consumption.   

Ashford Advice are now able to offer family mediation. This is a process in which an independent, professionally trained mediator helps you work out arrangements for children and finances following separation, it is not marriage guidance.

You may be concerned about the cost of legal fees. If you’re talking to your ex about your issues, and working together to reach agreement through mediation, there is much less need for a solicitor’s time. This means that legal fees can be kept as low as possible.

You can make an appointment for a fixed fee Mediation and Assessment Meeting with our FMC trained mediator by calling 01233 626185

In the first four months of the year, Ashford Advice helped a record number of people with food bank referrals and access to emergency charitable grants. There is a huge increase on the same period in 2020, and has been contributed to by the support needed by a record number of people in work. 

We are able to help Ashford residents with free, independent advice about debt and debt solutions

A new housing system and website is being rolled out across Kent to create a more user-friendly service for people on the housing register.

The system, which will be run by provider Huume, will go live in July 2023 and have a new look, be more streamlined and easier to navigate, while still providing the same service.

Once launched, applicants will continue to log into their accounts and be able to view and bid on properties in the Ashford borough as and when they become available, the same as they do now.
 

To move from the current system to the new one, it means that any new applications to the housing register are suspended for a month while outstanding ones are completed and data moved over.

This will happen from 1 June 2023, and Ashford Borough Council suggests applicants wanting to apply to the register put in new applications well before this date. The register resumes on 1 July.

The process for people who find themselves unexpectedly homeless or requiring housing options advice during that month will still be in place.

Kent Homechoice is a partnership of 13 local authorities, 28 housing associations and Kent County Council, which was set up to provide a way to apply for affordable and social housing.

If clients approach Ashford’s housing register team and are considered to be vulnerable and in a high housing need, it will be possible for their applications to be added manually to the Huume system during the period that the housing register is suspended.

For more information please visit www.kenthomechoice.org.uk

Prepayment meter customers typically pay more for their energy than those paying by direct debit. But the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says from 1 July the “prepayment penalty” will end, cutting bills for over four million households.

The change is expected to come into effect from 1 July through updates to the Energy Price Guarantee, with the full announcement on the reform to come in the Chancellor’s budget today

Social housing should be safe, secure and well maintained. If you have an issue with your landlord, it’s now easier to make things right.

The Charter says every resident should expect to: ​

• Be safe in their home​
• Know how their landlord is performing​
• Have their complaints dealt with promptly and fairly​
• Be treated with respect​, backed by a strong consumer regulator for tenants
• Have their voice heard by their landlord​
• Have a good quality home and neighbourhood to live in​
• Be supported to take their first step to ownership

Watchvideo – Video from YouTube

The government is already taking action to achieve the aims sets out in the Charter for Social Housing Residents. This includes:

1. Allowing for residents to take complaints directly to the Housing Ombudsman Service without delay – by removing the need to go to your MP, local councillor or tenants’ panel first and to wait 8 weeks after completing your landlord’s process
2. Making smoke alarms mandatory in all social homes, and carbon monoxide alarms mandatory in all social homes with a gas supply
3. Launching the Social Housing Quality Resident panel to bring together residents from across England to share their views with the government on our approach to driving up the quality of housing
4. Publishing new tenant satisfaction measures from the regulator to make landlord performance more visible to tenants so they can hold their landlord to account
5. Publishing an anti-social behaviour information package to clarify the roles of the agencies responsible for tackling anti-social behaviour and the help and support available for tenants
6. New powers introduced in the Social Housing Regulation Bill for the Housing Ombudsman to identify best practice in case handling, including publishing a new Complaint Handling Code with which social housing landlords are expected to comply and this will be monitored.
7. The Housing Ombudsman can also now publish guidance on good practice and order social landlords to complete a self-assessment against this guidance when a complaint is received.
8. In August 2022, we announced that the Department will highlight poor practice by landlords including on its social media platforms. We will publish `Severe Maladministration’ findings by the Housing Ombudsman and judgements of the Regulator of Social Housing that consumer standards have been breached.

The Times are reporting that Jeremy Hunt is “poised” to extend the government’s £2,500 energy price guarantee for a further three months from April – June rather than lift it to £3,000 as planned.

The move, which is expected by energy companies, is an effort to limit increases in people’s bills until the summer, and would protect households from a 20% hike in bills.

A three-month extension would take us to July, when analysts expect Ofgem’s price cap to drop to around £2,100 per year (for a typical household), well below the government’s current guarantee.

The energy price cap is set by Ofcom as a limit on the maximum amount suppliers can charge customers on standard tariffs for each unit of gas and electricity they use, and sets a maximum daily standing charge.

For a typical dual-fuel household paying by direct debit, the price cap is currently set at £4,279/year, expected to fall to £3,280 from 1 April.

The Government pays suppliers of gas and electricity to discount these rates under the price cap with the Energy Price Guarantee, so a consumer with typical use currently pays £2,500/year, but this is expected to rise to £3000/year from 1^st April

In addition to this consumers should get a £400 discount directly from their supplier to help with energy bills over winter 2022 to 2023. This is called the Energy Bills Support Scheme (EBSS).

The change in the Energy Price Guarantee means the average household on direct debit with dual fuel will pay another £40.00/month, however the effect of ending the subsidy under the Energy Bills Support Scheme will in effect mean an overall rise of over £100.00/month.

Whilst the new Energy Price Guarantee is expected to last for the next 12 months, if Ofgem’s price cap falls below this level, households will pay the lower amount.

This is predicted to happen in July, with analysts Cornwall Insight forecasting the price cap to fall to £2,153 a year, and staying around that level when it changes again in October.