Future funding for Citizens Advice was debated last Wednesday (2nd December) during a private members debate at Westminster which marked the 70th anniversary of Citizens Advice. The debate was secured by the Labour MP for Staffordshire Moorlands, Charlotte Atkins who was seeking to ensure that additional funding, which was allocated to CAB earlier this year, would continue.
Central Government allocated additional resources of £10 million to Citizens Advice in England and Wales this year, to facilitate increased opening hours of some bureaux. This additional money was made available in light of the increased strain on bureaux resources, caused by the ever increasing numbers of clients and issues CAB has to deal with. Ms Atkins was concerned that the current additional funding, facilitating extra bureaux hours, is due to end on 31 March 2010.
Ms Atkins said "Debt, benefits and tax credits, employment and housing remain the key issues on which advice is sought. Providing help might involve just assisting people to fill in benefit application forms, supporting them to exercise their statutory rights, negotiating with their creditors or offering financial education."
She added "Each year, 6 million advice issues are dealt with by CAB and 1.9 million clients are advised by local bureaux. There are also 8.8 million visits to the public information and advice website. Citizens Advice Bureaux are a lifeline. Furthermore, a remarkable 86 per cent of service users are satisfied with the service and £86 million is the staggering figure for the estimated value to the economy of people volunteering with the Citizens Advice service."
The Minister for Further Education, Skills, Apprenticeships and Consumer Affairs, Kevin Brennan responded to Ms Atkins and many other MPs' support for Citizens Advice by stating that, although the measures put in place due to the additional funding had been a success, it was only ever meant to be "a temporary measure".
He went on to say "I cannot anticipate the forthcoming pre-Budget report. However, the scheme has been highly successful.......Although I cannot say any more today, this being a matter for the Chancellor, I acknowledge the success of the scheme in a time of recession.”
Derek Alcorn, the Chief Executive of CAB Northern Ireland said
"As a frontline generalist advice agency, Citizens Advice has taken the strain of the worst recession since the 1930's, with no additional resources in the current year apart from £500k which has just been released to Councils for advice by DSD. This is in a context in which the DSD itself created 150 additional posts in Jobs and Benefit offices to cope with the extra demand generated by the recession. Other objective indicators in the NI economy include a year on year increase in redundancies of 184% in the year to August, and an increase in the claimant count of 83% in the year to August.
We would ask the Assembly to consider increased support to frontline advice agencies in the circumstances."