A network, not an adviser#
AdviceUK was founded in April 1979 as the Federation of Independent Advice Centres, launched at a meeting of around 100 activists in North Kensington. Today it describes itself as a membership organisation supporting the UK's largest network of independent advice services, around 700 of them, which by its own account advised more than 2.8 million people in 2024. Its vision is that everyone, whatever their means, can get the advice they need to use their rights.
It is important to know what it does not do. Its contact page says plainly that AdviceUK does not give advice to members of the public: it exists for advice centres, providing training, insurance, case management software, a jobs board and policy work, and distributing some grant funding to advice services.
Finding a member near you#
For the public, the route is its member directories. The contact page links two: one for advice services in England and Wales, and one for Scotland. Members are independent local organisations, many of them small, covering debt, housing, benefits and immigration, and some specialise in particular groups, such as students, disabled people, or people experiencing domestic abuse. Each member sets its own opening hours, area and way of working, so check the listing and contact the centre directly.
AdviceUK also runs AdviceFinder, a database of more than 10,000 advice services, but that is a paid tool for frontline agencies, not a public search.
What an advice centre can do around a new name#
AdviceUK publishes nothing on names, and you do not need an adviser to make a deed poll: anyone aged 16 or over can use GOV.UK's free wording. Where a local advice centre helps is with what surrounds the change:
- Benefits. Reporting the new name on a claim, and sorting out a payment held up because the names on your documents differ.
- Debt. Making sure creditors and any debt solution, such as a debt relief order, are in the right name, since a new name does not end a debt.
- Housing and immigration. Updating a tenancy or council record, and, for immigration matters, an adviser authorised to give that advice.
Who to tell after changing your name gives the order to work through, and help paying for a deed poll covers the costs that can come with it.
Other routes to free advice#
If there is no AdviceUK member nearby, Citizens Advice covers England and Wales, Citizens Advice Scotland covers Scotland, and Advice NI is the network in Northern Ireland.
This page describes what AdviceUK publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. AdviceUK has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
