NEW legislation and greater awareness should allow disabled people to play a more active role in the community, an annual report has claimed.

Chris Waring, disability services manager for Blackburn Citizens' Advice Bureau, says he hopes that encouragement will be given to services to allow greater accessibility.

In the bureau's annual report he says that its disability services department went from strength to strength last year with more than 2,000 inquiries from people and their carers.

More than £169,000 was recovered for disabled people who were told they were not entitled to benefit.

The bureau, based in Richmond Terrace, is now 18 years old and employs a manager, deputy manager, solicitor, money advice support worker, disability service manager, administration assistant and 40 voluntary advisers.

Almost a quarter of the advisers are from the ethnic community and the CAB has staff who speak nine languages including Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, Swahili, Gujerati, Punjabi, French and Italian.

Andrea Baker, who was appointed chairman halfway through the year, says: "Any organisation is bigger than the individuals it compromises, so in spite of our many departures, we hope that the public has found the service seamless."

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