Cancer charity to axe advice service

Macmillan Cancer Support is to scrap its £14m a year specialist advice service, which helps tens of thousands of people every year, in what has been described as a "betrayal" of vulnerable patients.

- Patrick Butler Andrew Gregory

Macmillan, one of the UK's biggest and highest profile charities, told staff and partners this week it plans to cease funding its current specialist benefits advice services in just over a year's time.

Its advice services help cancer patients navigate the benefit system to ensure they get financial support if they have to give up work during treatment, as well as help with the extra costs of their illness, such as food, heating and transport.

The latest annual figures from 2022 show the services, operated under contract by 70 local Citizens Advice branches, secured £112m in support for 34,000 cancer patients, at least a quarter of whom were living in poverty and 40% of whom were pensioners.

Macmillan said its centrally run helpline would continue to offer welfare advice, but advisers told the Guardian that unlike the Citizens Advice-run services, this would not offer indepth specialist advice, do casework or have local knowledge of support services.

The cuts to welfare advice services come three months after the Guardian revealed Macmillan had axed a quarter of its staff to cut costs and scrapped its annual £17m hardship fund, which gave £200 grants to tens of thousands of cancer patients on low incomes.