AT the bottom of almost every council document, every newspaper piece about benefits, debts and social disaster, it’s there: “For more help and advice, contact your local Citizens’ Advice Bureau.”

And we do. In our hundreds of thousands. Last year in Bournemouth alone, more than 9,500 new inquiries were made. The 100-strong volunteer team and the 10 salaried staff are currently dealing with clients who between them owe a staggering £14,798,000 worth of debt, as well as a host of other difficulties.

Thanks to Citizen’s Advice people don’t lose their homes, get ripped off by greedy landlords, sharked by criminal lenders and in a muddle with their benefits.

But there’s a storm coming. And they know it.

In its submission to the government’s Spending Review, Citizens Advice nationally urged George Osbourne to focus on tackling unnecessary and costly bureaucracy and poor standards of service rather than resort to hitting the vulnerable through rash spending cuts.

Chief executive Gillian Guy said: “We appreciate that in the current economic context the government is committed to significantly reducing public expenditure but we welcome the fact that this spending review is seeking to involve the public and the voluntary sector.”

Number one on the CA wish list – as mentioned by 81 per cent of their helpers – is a simpler benefits system which they say would result in fewer people having to contact the official service. It would save money, they say, and it appears that they may get their wish, with a reported “bonfire of the benefits” which will be merged into a simpler Universal Credit scheme.

This, of course, is the issue nationally. Locally, joint CA chief Brian Moore says their main concern is funding, and the maintenance of the Kinson Hub – the second branch of the Bournemouth operation which runs their new phone-in service.

“At a time when Citizens Advice has never been more needed, we will have to face funding pressure to our work,” he says.

The triple whammy comprises any cutbacks made in the Spending Review, the issue of local authority funding and the ending of the Financial Inclusion Fund, which pays for a lot of their debt work.

“What we do isn’t sexy, it’s not new, but it is so necessary,” he says. And even more so with the financial horror to come. “We wont’ see anything immediate but as more people are made redundant and problems arise from that, they will start to trickle in,” he says.

To these people will be added the victims of the Inland Revenue cock-up, plus the pile-up of issues Bournemouth CA are already facing.

It sounds horrendous but Brian believes there is hope because the straightened times will see people “adapt and bite the bullet”. He says people will cope with the changes forced on them and that: “We need to think about ways to help people become more independent and tackle their problems themselves.”

This is very Big Society and so is his view that while the CA is confidential, “we are also not here to help people cheat the system”.

“We are not here to help people get benefits and services to which they’re not entitled but we need to be able to help people get the help that is there for them which they may not know about or feel able to access.”

He says the service knows that financial constraint will change what they do but the worry is: how much? “We do support what the Big Society wants and can provide a service but I think that with our volunteers, with all that we do, we already ARE the Big Society,” he says.

And the unspoken question, of course, is does David Cameron understand this?

See citizensadvice.org.uk