Nearly triple the number of volunteers are desperately needed by Bradford and Airedale’s Citizens’ Advice Bureau to cope with the massive demand on services that saw 32,000 people with a combined debt of £16 million pass through the doors last year.

Sixty eight volunteers helped deal with those clients, between April 2011 to March this year, but the branch estimates it needs up to 200 volunteers to adequately tackle all the queries it receives.

The CAB’s general service manager, Razina Bostan, said homelessness, payday loans and complex benefit claims were the main problems dealt with by the 45 paid staff and volunteers across three offices, with the frontline helpdesk predominantly staffed by voluntary workers.

Now the CAB is appealing for help as part of Volunteers’ Week, which started on June 1 with the theme, ‘Heroes on the frontline: spare a moment, change a life’.

Queues of people are always outside the George Street Bureau in Bradford, desperately seeking help, including those made redundant after working for the same company for 30 years only to be without a job and lost in the maze of the benefits system.

Others fear asserting their basic rights at work because they are frightened of losing their job, Miss Bostan said. She added that some Eastern European families faced destitution because of their difficult circumstances.

She said: “Since the recession there has been a big explosion in demand. It is heartbreaking for us and volunteers to see so many people in desperate need and we try to help as many people as possible. Without the volunteers we would not be able to provide half the services we are providing.

“In order to make services more accessible we need a lot more volunteers. We are dealing with more advice queries than ever before and highly complex issues relating to benefits. People can be waiting for benefits for weeks or months.

“They might be without food, they might have very little family or community support and no-one to loan or borrow off.

“It is important to us we have volunteers with good listening skills, a lot of life experience, and people who are willing to learn.

“People think they need to be academic to volunteer, but that is not the case. We would like to get up to 150 or 200 volunteers.”

Miss Bostan said that many volunteers, including herself, were now paid staff and some were on the management team.

“The Big Society concept to us is not a new concept because we have been using volunteers for a long time,” she added.

For more information on volunteering opportunities visit http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/index/join-us/volunteer_bureau_search.htm.