THE Citizens Advice Bureau in England and Wales is to receive £10m from the Government to extend its opening hours and train more volunteers.

Over 340 individual CABs will benefit from the money, which will allow the network to stay open for approximately 170,000 additional hours and help 600,000 extra clients between now and March 2010.

The service dealt with 5.54m different cases over 2007/08.

CAB currently deals with 450 new cases involving mortgage arrears and 475 fresh redundancy enquiries every working day.

As well as seeing a 125% increase in redundancy enquiries between April and November 2008, daily enquiries about Job Seekers Allowance rose by 66% in the same period across the service.

There were also significant increases in enquiries about bankruptcy, Council Tax debts, fuel debts and rent arrears to private landlords.

New research by the CAB also shows that its clients currently owe an average of £16,971 each.

The organisation has also seen debt inquiries double in the last decade.