By Kaye Wiggins, Third Sector Online, 26 January 2011

Citizens Advice issues redundancy notices to 900 debt advice staff

Advice service does not yet know if it will continue to receive money from the government's Financial Inclusion Fund

Citizens Advice has issued redundancy notices to 900 staff employed on a programme to provide debt advice in deprived communities.

The scheme received money from the government's Financial Inclusion Fund, backed by a five-year grant from the Treasury, worth £130m, £87m of which was allocated to Citizens Advice.

The funding runs out in March, but the charity has not yet heard from the Treasury whether it will be renewed.

A Citizens Advice spokesman said the redundancies affected about 75 per cent of the staff employed on the programme.

He said the redundancy process would be reversed if the government agreed to carry on funding the scheme, but the charity had been forced to issue the redundancy notices now because of the legal requirement to give adequate notice.

"We really need to get an answer from the government about this," he said. "We had expected to know the outcome by now. Many of our local centres are struggling because of cuts in local authority funding and in legal aid, as well as this."

Citizens Advice has 7,000 staff working in all its bureaux, and uses 21,500 volunteers.