The Citizens Advice service helps people resolve their legal, money and other problems by providing free, independent and confidential advice, and by influencing policymakers.
Every Citizens Advice Bureau is a registered charity reliant on trained volunteers and funds to provide these vital services for local communities.
16 February 2009
The Citizens Advice service is using a £10m funding boost from the Government to extend its opening hours and ensure even more people can benefit from receiving free, independent and impartial advice.
The extra funding will allow the charity’s bureau network to stay open for approximately 170,000 additional hours, benefiting around 600,000 extra clients during the 14 month period to the end of March 2010.
The funding was announced by the chancellor in November’s Pre Budget Report and makes up a substantial part of the total £15m allocated for boosting debt advice across the sector.
Citizens Advice 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. Last year (Apr 2007-Mar 2008) the charity dealt with 5.54 million issues overall and fears this will grow further as more people lose their jobs, get further into debt and risk losing their homes.
The Citizens Advice bureau network currently deals with 450 new cases involving mortgage arrears and 475 new redundancy enquiries every working day.
As well as seeing a 125% increase in redundancy enquiries between April and November 2008, daily enquiries about Job Seekers Allowance rose by 66% in the same period.
Significant increases were also seen in enquiries about bankruptcy, Council Tax debts, fuel debts and rent arrears to private landlords.
David Harker, Chief Executive of Citizens Advice said:
“This is a great vote of confidence in CAB advice and welcome recognition that bureaux need additional support right now. With this money over 340 CABs will be able to stay open longer and see more people.
“As people on low and moderate incomes are struggling to make ends meet at a time of increasing uncertainty about the security of their jobs and incomes, access to reliable, high quality, free, independent advice has never been more vital.”
Local bureaux will decide how to use their funding to stay open later. Some will be open for an extra morning a week, some will add on an extra hour a day and some bureau are planning late night and weekend opening. To find out if your bureau is increasing its opening hours check local papers for information, call or check their website. You can find contact details for your local bureau at 
www.adviceguide.org.uk
www.adviceguide.org.uk 
