The Legal Services Commission (LSC) last week launched the first in a series of advice projects aimed at tackling financial exclusion.

The £6 million Money Advice Outreach projects, providing free face-to-face money advice, is part of £120 million allocated by the government over three years to the Financial Inclusion Fund, which will also help people gain access to banking services and affordable credit.


The LSC schemes involve the St Ann's Welfare Rights Advice Group in Nottingham, Citizens Advice Bureaux in Macclesfield, and Cambridge and District, and A4e, an organisation with experience in such work.


Their advisers will be working in prisons throughout the south-west of England, alongside JobCentre Plus locations and providers of 'welfare to work' and work-based learning in west Wales and the Valleys, and with people with housing problems in Northumberland and Tyne & Wear.


Crispin Passmore, director of the Community Legal Service, said: 'By ensuring that people who would not traditionally seek help obtain practical advice and assistance in addressing their money problems via these services, we aim to enable them to play a fuller role in society.'