01 Jul NEW RESEARCH SHOWS OVER 40,000 PEOPLE LIVING IN CORNWALL UNABLE TO AFFORD ESSENTIAL COSTS
New research published by Citizens Advice Cornwall has found that 40,000 people living in Cornwall have more money going out than coming in every month.
The worrying trend of negative budgets – where people’s expenditure on basic bills like energy, housing and food exceeds their income – is a growingproblem in the county.
As falling living standards continue to push people’s finances to the brink, the new analysis from Citizens Advice Cornwall found energy costs and housing are the key costs swallowing up people’s income, pushing many into the red.This means more and more people in this situation are likely to fall further into a spiral of debt.
Citizens Advice Cornwall Chief Executive, Jon Berg, said:
“What was once a rarity for Citizens Advice services in Cornwall – seeing people come to us in a negative budget – has sadly now become the new normal for our advisers.
“Getting people out of the red and into the black is what we excel in. But we can’t tackle a challenge of this scale alone.
“People are living on empty, cutting back their spending to unsafe levels just to get by. This cannot continue.
“With living standards falling, we need politicians from all sides in Cornwall to get serious about addressing the issue head on.”
With a general election looming, Citizens Advice Cornwall’s research also found more than half of voters in all Cornish constituencies said the cost of living, or living standards, was one of the most important issues in determining how they will vote while more than three-quarters said that negative budgets are an important issue.
| Constituency | Negative budget rate | Number of people in negative budget |
| South East Cornwall | 5.38% | 4893 |
| St Austell and Newquay | 8.02% | 8000 |
| Truro and Falmouth | 6.14% | 5826 |
| Camborne and Redruth | 8.51% | 8433 |
| St Ives | 5.88% | 5204 |
| North Cornwall | 7.80% | 7734 |
| Constituency | % said cost of living or living standards was one of the most important issues in determining how they will vote. | % said that negative budgets are an important issue. |
| South East Cornwall | 55.59% | 80.82% |
| St Austell and Newquay | 57.96% | 81.12% |
| Truro and Falmouth | 55.78% | 82.17% |
| Camborne and Redruth | 59.22% | 79.68% |
| St Ives | 53.94% | 78.89% |
| North Cornwall | 54.31% | 80.29% |
The picture locally mirrors what others across Britain are experiencing. Five million people are now in a negative budget – including 1.5m children – with an additional two million people cutting back their spending to unsafe levels in order to not slip into the same situation.
Citizens Advice found that in the top 50 marginal seats in the upcoming election, an average of 62%of people say the cost of living, or living standards, will be important in how they vote.
Over the course of the coming financial year, unless incomes go up or costs come down, households in a negative budget will face an average shortfall in their budget of more than £4,200 each.
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NOTE TO EDITORS
To calculate the number of people in a negative budget, we multiplied the number of households in a negative budget (using figures from the National Red Index) by the ONS estimate for the average household size (2.36).
