Citizens Advice delivers debt advice across England, funded by the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS). In response to the pandemic, over 500 local staff moved to delivering debt advice remotely. Our local offices worked incredibly hard to move a predominately face-to-face service to this new way of working. Nationally, we supported local offices to work remotely by distributing funding for equipment and digitising our offer. This year, we also pushed forward to help more people with debt by: securing additional funding to recruit an additional 138 trainee debt advisers across England as we anticipated an increase in demand for debt advice, providing resources to 71 local Citizens Advice that hadn’t received MaPS funding before rolling out our new Debt Relief Order Unit way of working and on-boarding all local Citizens Advice and other independent advice agencies launching a national debt helpline to allow clients to get help with debt advice on the phone from a MaPS-funded adviser anywhere in the country. We answered over 1,800 calls within the first 4 months introducing a new Trainee Academy for debt advisers last year, with 97% of participants saying the academy was good or excellent and 100% reporting that they were confident to deliver debt advice In total, we helped over 250,000 people with debt problems—supporting clients to write off a total of £180 million of debt—and we helped 135,000 clients gain £840 million of extra income. Of the people we helped with debt, 9 in 10 said they would recommend our services to a friend and 86% said we helped them find a way forward. Read our debt impact report 2020/21 for more information. How our advice helped Anna Anna had been working in the hospitality industry but was made redundant after the outbreak of the pandemic. They had several credit debts subject to payment holidays. Anna felt they were unlikely to be returning to work soon due to their mental health. Our adviser supported them to apply for Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment —securing Anna £404 per month in additional income—and helped them agree a moratorium with all creditors. Anna was advised on all their options and chose to apply for a Debt Relief Order. A total of £11,696 was written off and they say their mental health has improved following our support. * Money and debt advice *Names and certain details have been changed or omitted to preserve client anonymity. 27 How we’re helping people