Citizens Advice Bureau Auckland City (CABAC) held its AGM today. CABAC operates 10 branches (inside the former Auckland City Council Boundary). In the last financial year, the core service saw 36,095 clients. On top of that CABAC offers various clinics such as legal, counselling and financial mentoring at various branches, which helped another 40,647 people.

CABAC General Manager Kate Anderson said there had been some interesting trends in how people contacted the service, and how long it was taking to help them.

“The percentage of our clients who come into one of our sites to see a volunteer face-to-face is much the same for previous years at around 58 percent. Interestingly email enquiries have been consistently (as an average across all of our branches) at around five percent of all client interviews over the past five-years – so not increasing, which is perhaps unexpected.

“However, what is increasing is the amount of time spent per client, with client interviews taking an average of 24.78 minutes in 2025, an increase of eight percent on the 2022 year.

This endorses the anecdotal feedback from volunteers that the issues clients are presenting with are increasingly more complex,” Anderson said.

CABAC has developed Rangatahi workshops for secondary school students with pilot deliveries during the year at Waiheke High School and Massey High School, she said.

The workshops focused on challenges students faced when they leave school and helped them to consider how they might respond (with a focus on the Youth Tool Kete on the CAB’s nationwide website - https://youth.cab.org.nz/ ).

“We hope to offer these workshops to many more schools in 2026, but will need to secure external funding in order to do so.”

CABAC awarded life membership to three volunteer interviewers at its AGM and various merit awards including one award for 30 years’ service.

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