THESE are hard times for the people of Morecambe if the latest statistics released by the town's Citizens Advice Bureau are anything to go by.

The number of people calling in to the Queen Street bureau has almost doubled from 9,500 to more than 17,000 since 1995.

Nearly half of those enquires were about debts to banks and shops. In total the CAB team dealt with more than £3 million worth of debt last year. The most frequent cause of financial difficulty was ill health closely followed by relationship breakdown.

Morecambe's CAB also took the cases of 22 workers against their employers to court and won more than 80 per cent of them. They secured £34,626,20 for their clients. One of the cases they helped with involved a worker whose employer refused to cough up his last pay cheque. A communication from CAB ensured the employer paid up more than £800.

A lot of the enquiries were about benefits. One successful case involved a disabled woman who was refused a state hand-out. In the end she was awarded £90 a week plus a backdated lump sum of more than £6,500.

All the debt enquiries taken together amounted to more than 9,000 calls in the resort. A number of those concerned repayment schemes entered into under pressure from the creditors. In one case the CAB forced a credit company to back down saving a woman more than £900.

Commenting on the annual report bureau manager Austin Staunton commented: "At first we put the large increase in the number of enquiries down to our move to offices on Queen Street in 1996 but it has gone beyond that now. It just shows that there is a lot of hardship in Morecambe."

Austin and his team are always looking for any volunteers who can help out. Anyone is welcome to join their team and they will be trained. Call 400404 if you can help.

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