Low wages 'leading South Yorkshire families into serious debt'
It's claimed low wages are leading to more and more South Yorkshire families struggling with severe debt.
It's claimed more and more families in South Yorkshire are struggling to make ends meet - and getting into serious amounts of debt.
A new report's claimed low income families are under pressure - with more than a million households with an income less than £30,000 in extreme debt.
It's being put down to wages not going up enough - what the TUC and UNISON are calling a 'wage stagnation'.
Steve Wilcox's from Sheffield Citizens Advice - he's told Hallam they've seen a steady rise in people coming to them for help with debt problems:
"We could usually sit down with an individual, work out a budget and somebody would usually have something to offer their creditors, even if that's a very low amount. But increasingly what we're finding is there's really just no way to balance the budgets - there's really not even enough money there to cover the basic essentials."
"More recently what we're finding is it's debts associated with being on very vey low incomes. As austerity bites, people are finding their real incomes are reducing and they're just not managing to pay the essentials."
The new figures come from a report published today by the TUC and UNISON who are worried levels of debt are going to continue rising.
Steve says it's a big problem here in South Yorkshire:
"We're certainly seeing more people whose income just isn't enough to make ends meet. We've finding a lot of debts associated with the welfare reforms that have been put in place over recent years."
"Increasingly it's problems with the essentials - the priorities in life. Things like rent arrears, council tax arrears, fuel debts - those tend to be the most important things to deal with."