Community Gardening...21, Citizens Advice Bucks

Citizens Advice Bucks –New Name, Same Roots

Citizens Advice Chiltern has recently merged with Aylesbury and High Wycombe offices to form Citizens Advice Bucks.

The advice charity offers free, independent and impartial, expert advice on a range of issues. Whether it is problems with debt, benefits, housing, employment or other areas, they have been there for those who need it since 1939.

Whilst there is a national Citizens Advice, each local bureau is in fact its own charity. The decision to join up the three local offices was made in part to make working with Bucks Council easier. But that was by no means the only reason behind the merger. Thalia Jervis, Chief Executive for CABucks has said-

“Coming together has put us in a really strong position. We can share our expertise across the county which will help us to keep providing our quality service to all our clients across Bucks. We will also be able to tailor our service where needed. Our local roots and providing local support will always be paramount to us. The change of name will make no difference to the trusted service that we provide to our clients- in fact we are hoping it will go from strength to strength”

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen a change of working for the CABucks team in Chesham. Face to Face appointments have had to stop but anyone who needs help has been able to call their adviceline or email the team for advice. They have remained a key support for many in our town at a time where need has grown.

Looking at Citizens Advice statistics it can be seen that this is a charity that really helps those who need them. 9 in 10 have said that the help given has helped them find a way forward and 9 in 10 would recommend the service to a friend.

CABucks has recently looked at the data across the three offices to show how much they made a difference to Bucks residents in 2020/2021. The charity helped over 10,000 clients with over 36,000 issues. They achieved £1.8Million in income gains for their clients and distributed over £47,000 worth of food vouchers. On a local level they still have the dedicated foodbank voucher line for their clients in Chiltern: 01494 785660. The charity makes a real difference to the lives of individuals. Emma, a client of theirs says “They made such a positive impact on my life. It is so much better now. They are an incredible team”.

Safia Akram, Head of Services, says ‘It has been a difficult year with the issues surrounding the pandemic and not being able to see our clients face to face. We are reviewing the government guidelines and are looking forward to being able to offer our services and welcome everybody back into our office in Chesham as soon as we can’.

If you need advice from Citizens Advice Bucks you can go to their website; www.citizensadvicebucks.org.uk where there is lots of helpful information as well as a contact form. Or you can call the Adviceline on 0808 278 7938. They are also on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to donate to the charity you can do so via their website.

Chesham Connect – Destination Chesham

With an unerring sense of timing, Chesham Connect managed to deliver copies of the High Street Strategy to shops and restaurants, just two days before the December lockdown. Thankfully, Zoom allowed us to continue to meet and discuss what we might do once we emerged.

We decided that there were two dates to work towards. July 19th, when hopefully, out of lockdown, we can welcome visitors back to the High Street and on Saturday 9th October when we will be able to put on a town centre event with the hope of reasonable weather.

Working with students looking to enter the film industry, we have made a two-minute film promoting the High Street. Our Campaign ‘Destination Chesham’ promotes our unique High Street to people along the Metropolitan Line and beyond.

In two minutes, we could only show some of the many reasons to come to Chesham High Street, including our butcher and baker, but alas no candlestick maker, though we did film in Pearces’, which as we all know, stocks pretty much everything.

October, if all goes to plan, we are hoping to hold Chesham’s first Hat Festival thanks to Roger Crabbe, the original independent retailer, an eccentric hat maker based in Chesham in the 1600s. We were looking for something that the whole town could get involved with.

More details soon, but think competitions and activities for the whole family. We will start small and build the event each year. This is not a new idea, other towns have done this, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Chesham Connect is working in partnership with the Town Council, but we need more people to get involved, if the strategy is to succeed. Please contact us. Details of the High Street Strategy can be found at

https://cheshamconnect.org

Climate Emergency

Following the town council declaring a Climate Emergency in September 2019, we commissioned an independent eco-audit to better understand the negative impact that our everyday activities have on the environment (you can read the full audit in the Environment section of www.chesham.gov.uk). Since that time, we have been working hard towards our target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

So far, we have been focusing our activities in three areas: the resources we use; becoming more energyefficient; and supporting our local biodiversity. In terms of resources, all of our offices now use 100% postconsumer recycled paper and we have installed reusable whiteboards at the Town Hall for room hirers to use, instead of flipcharts. We’re making lots of small changes, such as using refillable pens and recycled plastic waste sacks, which will all add up to make a difference. And it’s not just our offices where we are making changes; our Parks team have recently changed the fertiliser they use for the town’s football pitches to an organo-mineral fertiliser which promotes stimulation of soil microbes and has lower emissions of ammonia and nitrous oxide than mineral fertilisers.

We’ve carried out lots of simple jobs to improve our energy efficiency, including draft-proofing doors, putting reflective film behind radiators to reduce heatloss through walls and installing thermometers so that we monitor our room temperatures. As our lights need replacing, we change them over to LEDs, and we’re trying out technologies that are new to us, such as infrared heaters, which are more efficient and cheaper to run than traditional heaters.

There are lots of opportunities to conserve and increase biodiversity on the land we look after. We planted 175 trees on our land over the last winter; and this doesn’t include the trees planted across town as part of the Communi-Tree project. We’ve created new wildflower areas at Chesham Moor Gym & Swim, in the cemetery and at our Parks Depot (we’ve already found a grass snake basking in the Depot wildflowers), and we’ve changed our management regime at the Co-op Field to see what wildflowers may grow there naturally under less intensive mowing. We were delighted to discover two species of orchid at Co-op Field in the first season of new management. We have started composting grass cuttings on site in some places, to create new habitats and reduce the carbon footprint of transporting mowings back to our Parks Depot for composting. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but we are committed to making a real change.

As well as becoming a carbon neutral council, we want to work with the community and local businesses to create a carbon neutral Chesham. We’re already working with Sustainable Chesham; their website sustainablechesham.org.uk has great ideas for easily achievable actions for individuals, such as their Community Energy Switch programme to encourage residents to switch to a renewable energy supply. And we’d like to hear from you with ideas for changes that the council, residents and businesses can make. You can contact us via our website, by phone to 01494 583798 or by email to policy@chesham.gov.uk.

Do you need to suffer with back pain?

Many of us suffer chronic back pain or become accustomed to frequent bouts of pain when there is no need to. We live in a culture where back pain is expected to be a condition that we will all suffer. Statistics show that 80% of people will suffer back pain as an adult and it is costing the NHS over £1.3 million every day. Out of the 30 million people who suffer back pain each year, 10 million will experience it for more than 12 months and 6 million will suffer for more than 6 months. In simple terms back pain is a big deal for the UK and is lowering the quality of life for millions through the loss of earnings, incapacitation, and chronic pain.

The causes of back pain are complex, some from birth, trauma or wear and tear through to lifestyle and stress. But does that mean we are helpless and destined to a lifetime of back pain?

From a Pure Body Fix® point of view there are four factors to consider with back pain:

Historic chronic conditions Lifestyle soft tissue conditions

Current aches & pains, etc. Stress, anxiety, or general wellbeing

There are three elements to a Pure Body Fix® consultation: assessment, treatment, and prevention. The initial assessment can take about 20 minutes and will review the four contributing factors. Remedial massage is used to apply advanced techniques to treat the areas identified during the assessment. The aim of prevention is to create a long-term positive outcome that can be achieved through lifestyle changes, specific exercises to rebalance dysfunctional soft tissue.

At The Massage Spa we offer a free back care analysis. If you have given birth, work at a desk, do repetitive work or play sport, then this postural assessment could save you years of chronic pain