Money advice

Do you have money worries or are you worried about debt or budgeting? Are you struggling to pay your rent or worried about losing your home?

Act now

  • Please don’t put off dealing with your debt. The longer you leave it before asking for help, the more likely the amount of money you owe is going to increase
  • Please don't borrow money at high interest rates, including money from illegal lenders. This will put you
    into greater debt
  • There are organisations that provide free, confidential, and impartial advice and support with your money worries
  • If you don’t pay your rent arrears and they continue to increase, your home may be at risk

Shropshire Council Welfare Support Team

The Welfare Support Team takes calls as follows:

  • From people who apply for help from our Local Support and Prevention Fund
  • For our Housing Options Team (who deal with Homelessness)

They provide people with advice on housing options and can provide solutions for people in financial crisis, including those who are unable to pay for some of their more essential living costs, such as food, gas, electricity, essential furniture costs and rent arrears. The team has close links with our Housing Options and social work teams, and can signpost people to any wider support they may need. To find out about a range of financial support from Shropshire Council, please call 0345 678 9078.

If you're worried about losing your home, please call our Housing Options Team on 0345 678 9005.

Keep Shropshire Warm

If you're struggling with gas and electricity costs, our Keep Shropshire Warm team could help. It offers free and impartial energy advice and can help you get your payments under control. It helps people in need across the county deal with managing energy debts by providing small grants and helping talk to energy suppliers. 

The team's friendly energy advisors can be called on 0800 112 3743 or by email at advice@mea.org.uk, or find them on Facebook - 'Keep Shropshire Warm'.

Stop loan sharks (Illegal money lenders)

A loan shark is someone who lends cash as an unauthorised business. This is illegal. They're not always easy to spot as they will seem friendly at first.

They'll lend you money but will charge extremely high levels of interest. If you can’t repay this money to them, they may resort to threats, violence and intimidation to make you pay what they say you owe them, even if you've repaid the debt several times over.

A loan shark will have little paperwork about your loan and they may not keep any details of the amount of money you pay back to them. They will add penalty charges for late payments and may sometimes add random additional sums of money to the amount they say you owe them.

Many people keep paying because they think they can afford the agreed weekly sum. They may not realise how much they have repaid or they may be afraid to stop making payments.

We advise you to never ask for money from a loan shark. They don't provide a community service. They're simply out to make as much money as possible and they leave people in greater debt than they were in in the first place.

If you think you may be involved with a loan shark, or if you think someone else is suffering at the hands of one, call the team in confidence as follows:

Telephone: 0300 555 2222
Text : 07860 022116
E-mail: reportaloanshark@stoploansharks.gov.uk
Website: Stop loan sharks 

Other useful contacts