December 2023 – Many more clients helped in Dec than Dec 2022

December 2023 saw significantly more clients helped by our charity than the previous December – at 610 compared to 376, a 62% increase.

This follows the trend we saw for the whole of the year – our busiest yet.

We also helped with almost double the number of issues in December compared to the same month in 2022 – at 1,829 compared to 961.

Universal Credit (870), benefits and tax credits (272), debt (189), housing (115) and charitable support and food banks (67) were the most common issues.

December saw a dip in numbers of key cost of living issues recorded compared to recent months – but this is consistent with previous Decembers.

December 2023 saw around a 60 per cent increase in these five key issues (PIP, energy, energy debt, charitable support and food banks and council tax arrears) compared to December 2022.

We finished the year having helped considerably more people with energy issues than any other year (376 by the end of the year compared to 295 for 2022).