Seven frontline Scottish Citizens Advice Bureaux are trialling the service, which is to see experts offer one-to-one help and advice to particularly vulnerable groups, including the homeless, ex-offenders, single parents and families on low incomes.

The aim is to provide financial advice in order to prevent excessive, spiralling debt and financial difficulties, rather than offer solely reactive action.

“The pilots will be run by experienced project officers,” Kaliani Lyle, chief executive officer of Citizens Advice Scotland, told BBC News Scotland.

“What they will offer clients is not reactive advice-giving but financial training in both one-to-one and group work sessions – help that will hopefully pre-empt the need for crisis money advice later on.”

The two-year project is backed by £500,000 in government funding, and comes soon after the announcement that personal debt in the UK last year passed the £1 trillion mark.

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