Citizens Advice staff vow to keep helping people after office destroyed in far-right riots

Staff at a branch of Citizens Advice in Sunderland have said they are “blown away” by the community’s support after their centre was set on fire during far-right riots. 

The branch of Citizens Advice was badly damaged during far-right demonstrations on Friday (2 August), with staff members confirming that windows had been smashed and the building set on fire. 

Staff confirmed that despite the damage, they have telephone lines up for those in “desperate need”. 

“We were obviously devastated,” Denise Irving, chief officer at Citizens Advice Sunderland, told the Big Issue, explaining that she had first been told about damage to the branch at around 9.15pm on Friday. 

“I thought on Saturday I would just be going down to try to clean up and get back up and running as normal, but it hasn’t quite been as simple as that.”

She added: “It’s been very upsetting for us as a team to watch it burn and to see people ruining things we’ve worked hard for, particularly when on Friday I’d been telling a lot of people to come back on Monday morning because they needed our support, and we didn’t have an office on Monday morning to come back to.”

Irving explained that the branch has “done our utmost to minimise the impact on our service, because we realise that it’s such a valuable service within the community”.

“People come to us for food parcels, fuel vouchers, crisis support… The thing we were most concerned about was making sure that we were still available and able to provide the services so desperately needed within the community,” she added. 

She explained that the Citizens Advice staff are currently using Sunderland City Hall as a base and have a telephone service in place so they can continue to carry out their services.

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Irving said that her and the team at Citizens Advice Sutherland have been “blown away” by the community’s support, with a GoFundMe page to raise money for the branch raising more than £13,000. 

“For me, what has been the biggest eye opener for me is the amount of support and kindness and generosity we’ve had since the incident,” she said. 

“We’ve had lots of offers of space. We’ve had lots of offers of support with help to clean and get back on track and for furniture and things like that… we’ve been blown away by the support that we’ve had.

“We are there for the community and I suppose we’re the ones that take care of everybody else, so when somebody else comes along and says, ‘No, we’ll take care of you…’ – it’s really lovely.”

She added that Citizens Advice staff haven’t been able to access the building since the fire on Friday as it’s been “deemed unsafe” – but that the team is “very resilient”. 

“We want to make sure that our services are not affected, because we know how desperate people are, and it’s a very difficult time. The last thing we want is for anybody to suffer unnecessarily just because we aren’t there in person,” she said. 

“We may not be fully fighting fit, but we’re doing as best we can, and most of our service is back up and running as it was before, so if anybody needs us, we are there.”

In a statement to the Big Issue, Northumbria Police said they have launched a full investigation into the disorder, and anybody found to have been involved will be dealt with robustly.

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