CAB provide a universal advice service to all clients who approach them. Typically, the problems for which they seek advice are debt, welfare and housing as well as employment, consumer and legal issues. Clients of CAB tend to be vulnerable, and demand for advice services has increased in times of austerity and public spending cuts. At the same time, advice services can be dependent on public funding and are facing cuts to their budgets. It is therefore important for advice services, like other voluntary and community sector organisations, to measure the impact of their interventions, calculate the return on investment by funders, and consider ways of improving service delivery in order to ensure value for money.

The study found a Social Return on Investment ratio of 1:50 over a 5 year period for the 80 clients who participated in the research. For every pound spent on CAB-BANES services, a value of £50 was generated.