Benefits advice and bill worries highlighted

Citizens Advice says that it has seen record-breaking demand for advice on its website over the past month with nine million page views, a 39% rise in the same period last year.

After an initial surge in enquiries about sick pay and redundancy, data from the charity now shows a dramatic increase in people seeking advice on paying bills and accessing benefits.

Over the month, pages on benefits were viewed over 2.2 million times, this includes just under 750,000 views of the Universal Credit pages. Advice pages on work, for example, sick pay or being furloughed, were viewed 1.6 million times.

Coronavirus was the most searched word on the charity’s website, followed by people looking for information on Universal Credit and the government’s furlough scheme.

Dame Gillian Guy, Chief Executive of Citizens Advice, said “Last month we helped millions of people. Behind each enquiry was a family struggling to pay rent, someone self-employed who could no longer afford their bills, or a person attempting to claim benefits for the first time.”

“These personal stories combine to paint a bigger picture of how lives have been interrupted by coronavirus.”

“Not only will we continue to help as many people as we can with their individual problems, we’ll use that bigger picture to advocate for change to make sure no one is left behind.”

The challenges that people are seeking guidance on have changed drastically over the past month, this graph shows the changes in daily rankings of the most viewed page on the Citizens Advice website.