our history

In 2020, a report commissioned by Advice Services Alliance, Advising Londoners Reseach, highlighted rapidly increasing demand for advice services (even before the COVID-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis) which were not matched by advice provision. The report also identified key strategic challenges including workforce, funding infrastructure gaps, and recommended coordinated investment in the supply of personnel, and London-wide approaches.

This report was followed by a further piece of research, in 2022, commissioned by LLST, called Mind the Gap which made a number of recommendations for addressing workforce gaps, including developing ‘Grow our own’, community-based advice training, apprenticeship schemes backed by the Apprenticeship Levy, and more. It also recommended development of sector-wide strategy.

In 2023, Propel funders including the City Bridge Foundation, and Trust for London, responded to the two reports by pooling £4.15m of funding via its “Robust Safety Net” mission to support eight community-led partnerships to test and scale up recruitment, training and development initiatives to attract new people into the advice sector and for existing staff to have clear progression pathways.