Debt problems accounted for a third of Citizens Advice enquiries in England and Wales over the last year, the charity said today.
It advised people on 7.1 million new issues in 2009/10 - an increase of 18% on the previous year - as the number of cases relating to debt surged 23% to 2.4 million in the year to March 31.
This was greater than the 11% rise seen the previous year as enquiries relating to debts owed to private bailiffs jumped 38% and cases involving fuel debts rose 33%. Problems over mortgages and secured loans were up by 21% but this was slower than the 49% increase a year earlier.
Citizens Advice said it responded to the recession by opening offices for more hours and distributing almost 800,000 leaflets about debt, money and benefits.
Chief executive David Harker said: "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."
Benefit problems related to 29% of all new enquiries after an increase of 21% to two million cases in the year. This was driven by issues relating to Jobseeker's Allowance, up 40% on last year but down on the previous increase of 61%.
After a huge jump last year of 114%, enquiries about redundancy were down in 2009/10 by 10%. However, this still equates to nearly 75,000 enquiries.
Harker said Citizens Advice was able to help more people last year due to additional funding from the Government and local councils. However, he added: "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."
