Citizens Advice annual advice statistics 2009/10

National charity Citizens Advice today publishes its annual advice statistics for the last financial year (April 2009-March 2010).

Bureaux across England and Wales advised people on 7.1 million new issues in the 2009/10 period, up 18% on the previous year (April 2008-March 2009). Debt is still the biggest area of advice, making up 34% of all enquiries, closely followed by Benefits at 29%. Both issues saw an increase in enquiries compared to last year: Debt was up 23% (2.4 million enquiries) and Benefits up 21% (2 million enquiries).

Employment is still the third largest area of advice with just over half a million enquiries, up 6% this year, but that increase is slowing compared to last year when enquiries rose 17% from the previous year.

Debt

• Within the category of debt, enquiries about debts to private bailiffs were up 38% compared to 2008/09
• Enquiries about fuel debts were up 33%
• Enquiries about debts to the Social Fund were up 33%
• Enquiries about rent arrears to private landlords were up 26%
• Enquiries about mortgage and secured loans arrears were up by 21% (slowing down from the 49% increase in 2008/09)

Benefits

• The biggest increase in enquiries was related to Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) up 40% on last year, but slowing down from the previous years increase of 61%
• Enquiries about Social Fund loans were up:
• 23% for information about crisis loans
• 21% for information about budgeting loans
• Housing Benefit is the biggest issue in this category, making up 11% of all benefits enquiries and up 19% on last year

Employment

• Enquiries about terms and conditions of employment were up 17% in 2009/10 compared to the previous year
• After a huge increase last year of 114%, enquiries about redundancy are down in 2009/10, by 10%. However this still equates to nearly 75,000 enquiries on the issue.

Citizens Advice Chief Executive David Harker, said:

“Citizens Advice Bureaux throughout the country were quick to respond to people affected by the recession by opening local offices for more hours and getting more information out to the public about employment, benefits and debt. In the past year we have distributed almost 800,000 leaflets about debt, money and benefits issues, had 17 million visits to our websites and 2.1 million people have had advice from local bureaux.

We know from our frontline that the human impact of the recession is far from over for people who have lost their job or their home, or both, in the past two years. Yet, there are millions more people struggling with debt and poverty, or missing out on welfare benefits, that Citizens Advice bureaux want to be able to assist.

“We were able to help more people last year thanks to some generous additional funding from the Government and many local councils. However much of this was short term, and our network of community based services, which rely on the generous help of 21,000 volunteers, may not be able to help as many people in future if funding is cut. It is absolutely vital that we are able to continue to provide the invaluable service we deliver to local communities without risk of major cuts and are very keen to talk to councils and the new Government as soon as possible about how the future advice needs of the nation can be met.”