Essex charity warns essentials are becoming more difficult to afford
Citizens Advice is calling on the next government to offer more to improve living standards
Last updated 9th Jul 2024
A charity in Essex says more people are coming forward with financial concerns than ever before.
Citizens Advice found 43% of UK voters say it’s more difficult to afford essentials than it was six months ago, despite falling inflation.
It revealed more than half of people aren’t hopeful that living standards will improve after the election today (4 July).
Martin Lord, Director at the Essex branch, believes people's salaries are not keeping up with inflation.
He said: “Although rates of inflation have reduced, the current state of inflation is after a long period of steady increases. So, what that means is people whose income has not increased in parallel to inflation, will have less spending power. Therefore, if they were struggling a bit before this all started, they're struggling even more now. Our data shows that more and more people are presenting to us with financial concerns, whether it be about benefits, debt, issues around housing, rent, council tax, energy bills.
“When clients come to see us, we start unpicking their finances in order to give them advice, and you can see that they’ve just not got enough to go around. You can see why they’re in this situation.”
This General Election, Martin is urging voters to scrutinise all policies of each party that deal with the cost-of-living crisis.
He said: “Citizens Advice believe that voters should scrutinise the various policies of the various parties about how they are going to address the cost-of-living issues that people have been experiencing.
“People perhaps need to be confident that the next government, whoever that is and whoever they want it to be, can implement a solution. Solutions that will drive meaningful improvements.”