Severing this vital lifeline for the most vulnerable is an act of folly

Citizens Advice Bureaux are needed more than ever as the Covid-19 recession bites, writes Martyn Mclaughlin

If you open your doors – and your hearts – to the public, it is only inevitable that you will bear witness to some of the more aberrant qualities of the human condition.

The network of Citizens’ Advice Bureaux (CAB) specked across Scotland is no exception. A folk story passed down generations of volunteers at the Drumchapel hub tells of the panicked phone call from the wee auld man in such a fluster, it took several minutes for him to gain his composure. When he did, he explained that he had lost his goldfish.

Then there was the Argyll woman whose passing interest in genealogy had hardened into an unhealthy obsession. Insistent that she was a descendant of Donnchadh, a 13thcentury nobleman, she implored her local bureau for help in claiming a centuries-old aristocratic birthright.

Calls such as these are irregular, though not uncommon, and provide levity for an army of volunteers. Most people who approach the bureaux are at their wits’ ends, and in truth, the eccentrics and the misfits are no different; desperation manifests itself in many different ways.

For the most part, the work of the 59 bureaux across Scotland is unremittingly bleak, and the problems they field are altogether more grave. They hear distressing, despairing stories of households on the brink, and of those that have already fallen apart, crippled by debt, unemployment, and above all else, a sense of hopelessness.

It is not just the scale of the calls and visits that stands out, even though the numbers have jumped sharply since coronavirus exerted its stranglehold on the economy. It is the complexity of the cases.

A single event, such as redundancy, often acts as a catalyst for a sharp, downward spiral. Exorbitant loans are taken out, repayments are missed, the mortgage falls into arrears, and a family which seemed about as stable as, well, mine or yours, can find itself disintegrating. The situation is so overwhelming that people often do not know what type of help they need.

It is CABS which help untangle the knots of bureaucracy tightening around the necks of the poorest, the vulnerable, and the marginalised. Their volunteers have heard it all, and are able to offer practical support and avenues for financial assistance. It is, in short, a lifeline service.

In light of the current economic climate – the deepest recession in living memory, according to the Fraser of Allander Institute – it is astonishing to consider that this vital, decades-old institution finds itself under threat, particularly in those areas where it is needed most. But with a tranche of the bureaux in Scotland’s biggest city either under threat, or facing swingeing cuts, that is the reality.

Proposed funding cuts by Glasgow City Council would result in the closure of five bureaux within the city’s boundaries. Swathes of the east end, where deprivation is at its most acute, would be disproportionately hit, with bureaux in the communities of Easterhouse, Parkhead, and Bridgeton all facing the axe.

Meanwhile, the three bureaux in the city which would remain – Glasgow North West, Drumchapel, and Pollok – would all face a programme of cuts come October, the same month the Covid-19 job retention scheme is scheduled to come to an end.

The potential consequences are catastrophic, as CABS have experi