The Government has announce a funding injection of £27m to sustain face to face debt advice services which were due to be axed at the end of March 2011.

The £25m per year Financial Inclusion Fund paid for 500 debt advisors nationwide, as well as providing a financial literacy workshops and initiatives between 2006 and 2010. The fund helped 379,000 people over 4 years, and over £1.7 Billion of debts were re-scheduled in 2009-10, helping thousands out of the misery of spiralling debt.

The latest announcement comes as a small piece of good news for the debt advice sector. Many FIF debt advisers received redundancy notices in February when the government announced the FIF would be axed as part of the public spending cuts.

The £27m new fund will support debt advice for 12 more months from 2011 - 2012.