Telephone adviceline: 03300 580 404
Webchat and online portal: www.shelter.org.uk/professionals
Telephone and webchat are available 9.00am – 5.00pm, Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays.
Shelter’s MaPS funded Specialist Debt Advice Service (SDAS) provides specialist second tier debt advice to a range of audiences, including local Citizens Advice offices, advice agencies, local authorities, housing associations and organisations that provide free advice to customers.
The team consists of eleven expert debt advisers, two team leaders, a project support officer, and a contract manager. The team leaders and advisers are all very experienced, with a range of specialisms in different areas of debt advice. The majority of the team have previously worked as first tier debt advisers, providing advice directly through local Citizens Advice offices and other advice organisations.
As a specialist service, Shelter’s remit is to advise on tricky and complex cases, cases requiring a second opinion, or cases that can be considered unusual. However, Shelter considers any enquiry as long as it is in scope of the service. Shelter recognises that advisers who work in smaller organisations may not have access to regular supervision or a wide range of resources and may need support with routine enquiries. For advisers who do have access to supervisors and debt advice resources, they are asked to first pursue these options before seeking advice from Shelter.
Shelter can advise on a wide range of debt issues, with Debt Relief Orders, Breathing Space and Bankruptcy enquiries consistently being the top 3 topics. Other popular topics of enquiry include: Council Tax, County Court, Liability/Recovery, Secured Debt, Parking/PCN/PFN, Enforcement Agents and the Limitation Act. The most common sub-topics under DRO enquiries are: qualifying debts, income and expenditure, preference, assets, hire purchase/PCP, eligibility, completing the application, beneficial interest, and rent.
Some topics are outside the scope of the service, including: cases where the customer is the claimant in the action; business debts; costs assessments/challenges; benefits, other than benefit related debt issues; housing rights/eligibility (Shelter can refer housing enquiries to Shelter’s Expert Advice Team); consumer issues and immigration. However, where enquiries are received on these topics, Shelter will attempt to signpost the adviser to relevant resources or to an organisation that can advise on these subjects.
Shelter can provide advice by telephone, webchat, or email. The email advice option, accessed by an online portal on our webpages, is probably best used for particularly complex enquiries or those that require documents to be considered.
As a second-tier service, Shelter are not able to advise customers directly, although they will sign post them to the most appropriate advice agency where possible. Occasionally they are able to provide supported casework, for example supporting an adviser to complete a court application of their customer’s behalf – they recently did this with a shared ownership possession case.
Shelter does not take any personal details of the end customer, and all documents submitted are required to have any personal customer details redacted. All urgent enquiries such as a listed court date or an imminent visit from an enforcement officer/bailiff will be responded to on the same day or within 24 hours in exceptional circumstances.
Shelter’s E-Bulletin Subscription
You can sign up to Shelter’s monthly e-bulletin via their website. This is produced by the team and includes a News and Legal Update section, a Spotlight article, a Case Law summary/important decisions section and occasionally an Enquiry of Interest article. All e-bulletin articles can be found on the SDAS pages of Shelter’s website, as can details of how to subscribe to the e-bulletin. The team also produces a Question and Answers section for each edition of Quarterly Account.
Working with the wider debt advice community plays an important part of the Shelter team’s work. They attend quarterly regional Money Advice Group meetings where they can and have recently started attending team leader and supervisor meetings at Debt Advice Organisations to talk to them about the service and run Q&A sessions.
For further information and access to the webchat and online portal, please visit the professionals section of Shelter’s website: www.shelter.org.uk/professionals