More debt advice from the Citizen Advice Bureau
26th March 2009
Citizens Advice is to provide an extra 170,000 hours advice over the next year to help people cope with the economic downturn.
The service is using the £10m of a £15m funding boost granted to the advice sector by the chancellor in November’s pre-budget report. It should be able to see around 600,000 extra clients during the 14 month period to the end of March 2010.
The charity said it has seen a large increase in enquiries linked to the downturn, with sharp rises in people seeking advice on redundancy, benefits and mortgage and secured loan arrears. From April 2007 to March 2008, Citizens Advice dealt with 5.54m issues and it expects this to grow as the downturn bites.
Its bureau network currently deals with 450 new cases involving mortgage arrears and 475 new redundancy enquiries every working day. There was a 125 per cent increase in redundancy enquiries between April and November 2008, while daily enquiries about Job Seekers Allowance rose by 66 per cent in the same period. Significant increases were also seen in enquiries about bankruptcy, Council Tax debts, fuel debt and rent arrears to private landlords.
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