A leading charity has released statistics which reveals that Britons making urgent requests for debt advice has reached an all time record.

Brighton Housing Trusts has documented a 50 per cent jump in the number of cases it has dealt with in the past three months.

Debt adviser for the organisation Lex Lewis said: The number of people seeking debt advice is often seasonal with summer traditionally being a quiet time, but this summer has seen a dramatic rise in my case load with numbers rising by a third. My workload has become so great that I am not able to take on any new clients until I have worked through the backlog."

Debt statistics have jumped significantly over the past two years coinciding with the well documented credit crunch, with the vast majority of families in the UK struggling or just about keeping their heads above the water surface.