About Citizens Advice in GP Practices
How a local advice service came to sit beside the family doctor, and why we believe it still belongs there.
A service that started at the reception desk
For many years, practice staff noticed a pattern. Patients arrived with a medical concern and, within minutes, described something else entirely: a letter from the council about unpaid rent, a benefit decision they did not understand, or a job that had become impossible to keep alongside treatment. The clinicians could listen, but they were not equipped to untangle a debt schedule or challenge a benefits assessment.
Citizens Advice began working inside GP practices as a response to that gap. Trained advisers were given a room, a regular timetable and a direct route to the people who most needed them. The idea was simple. If a problem was affecting someone's health, the help should be available in the place where that person already went for care.
Advice in the waiting room
Our advisers hold sessions on fixed days each week. Patients can book a short appointment at the front desk, or be referred by a GP, nurse or receptionist who has noticed that a worry is getting in the way of recovery.
Sessions are confidential. Advisers do not share a person's details with the surgery unless that person asks them to, and they explain at the start what they can and cannot do.
What we believe
Our mission is to make sure that money, housing, work and benefit problems do not quietly turn into health problems. We work on the premise that a person who understands their rights and options is better able to look after their own health.
Nobody should have to choose between seeing a doctor and sorting out the letter that is making them ill.
A principle that guides every adviser we train and every surgery we work with.
The values we work to
- Free of charge for every person who asks for help
- Confidential, with clear limits explained at the start
- Impartial, so we give advice whichever side of a dispute a person is on
- Local, shaped by the communities each surgery serves
- Accessible, including home visits and interpreters where needed
The people behind the service
Our team is made up of qualified advisers, practice liaison staff and volunteers who have trained for months before they sit in a consultation room. Advisers are supervised, regularly assessed and kept up to date with changes in welfare rules and housing law.
Each surgery partnership has a named lead on both sides, so that questions about referrals, space and scheduling can be settled quickly and without fuss.
How the partnership has grown
Stage one
A single pilot surgery
One practice trialled weekly sessions and recorded which problems patients raised most often.
Stage two
Shared referral routes
Reception teams and clinicians agreed simple ways to refer patients, without long forms or delays.
Today
Advisers in many practices
Sessions now run across a range of practices, large and small, in urban and rural areas.
Rooms where we meet people
The spaces we use are ordinary consultation rooms and side offices. We aim to make them calm and private, so that people can speak openly about money or housing without feeling watched.
Where to go next
If you would like to know what we help with day to day, the services page sets out each area of advice in more detail.