April 2024 statistics – a big rise on 2023 following slower March

April saw a 64.2% rise in client numbers compared to April 2023 – after March mirrored the client numbers for the same month in the previous year.

We saw 936 clients in April compared to 570 in April 2023 – though this was less than the numbers we were seeing per month over the winter.

Universal Credit (1,258), benefits and tax credits (589), debt (278), housing (201) and utilities and communications (98) were the most common issues.

April saw a rise in terms of the top five cost-of-living-related issues (energy, energy debts, PIP, council tax arrears and charitable support and foodbanks) compared to March. The number of these issues recorded was also substantially higher than in April 2023.

The cumulative number of people we’d helped with energy issues for the year was again smaller in April than by the same point in 2023.

However the projection for the end of the year (the yellow dotted line in the graph below) is still that 2024’s energy clients total will be higher than 2023’s.