Community-based debt advice

Community-based debt advice (CBDA) is free, trusted and quality debt advice based within communities. It aims to reduce people’s money worries, helping them to improve their financial resilience and take control of their situation.

What makes CBDA different to other forms of debt advice is that it’s embedded within the local support infrastructure. This approach draws upon community knowledge, presence and partnerships to reach people who might otherwise struggle to access advice.

Our ambition is for CBDA services to be:

• visible, trusted and accessible in communities
• tailored, high-quality support that helps people to achieve the best possible outcomes
• effective in helping people manage debt.

Grant funding is now available to support community-based debt advice organisations in England through the CBDA grant scheme.

The scheme aims to ensure that people experiencing financial difficulty, particularly those most in need, can access trusted, free and tailored community-based debt advice.

The scheme is designed to:

• reduce the impact of problem debt on individuals and communities
• improve financial resilience and wellbeing, and
• strengthen local support networks.

By embedding services within communities and using trusted local networks, CBDA seeks to reach those who might otherwise struggle to access help, and deliver advice in ways that reflect local needs and client preferences.

We currently fund community-based debt advice through four grants worth around £35m per year across London, the East Midlands, Greater Merseyside and the rest of England. Existing grants will run until March 2028.

Our focus will be on delivering CBDA grants alongside our existing national contracts for telephone and digital debt advice. We will begin market engagement on the recommissioning of our national services from early summer 2026.

To ensure services reflect local needs, the CBDA grant scheme is broken down into 15 geographical lots, across the nine English regions.

These lots have been shaped through extensive regional engagement and market feedback, so each one represents a realistic, manageable area with strong local connections and provider capacity.  

Some larger regions have been divided into smaller sub‑regional lots. This allows:

• more localised, community-focused service design
• greater opportunities for smaller and specialist organisations
• stronger partnerships rooted in local networks
• better alignment with devolved structures and local priorities.

The CBDA application process will run in two rounds, reflecting feedback during market engagement and ensuring stability for existing services. For Round 1, the funding allocated across lots ranges from £1.5m to £6m per year.

Round 1 consists of nine lots across four regions:

East Midlands

• Lot 1: covers the East Midlands and is delivered as a single, regional lot.

North West

• Lot 2: covers Greater Manchester.
• Lot 3: covers Lancashire and Cumbria.
• Lot 4: covers the Liverpool City Region and Cheshire.

West Midlands

• Lot 5: covers Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.
• Lot 6: covers the West Midlands Combined Authority area comprising Birmingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Dudley, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton.

Yorkshire and the Humber

• Lot 7: covers South Yorkshire.
• Lot 8: covers West Yorkshire.
• Lot 9: covers York, North Yorkshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Hull and Humber, and North East Lincolnshire.

The remaining five regions will be competed across six lots in 2027, for beginning service in April 2029:

• London
• North East
• East of England
• South West
• South East (two lots - Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire & Isle of Wight; and Surrey, East Sussex, West Sussex and Kent).

We have opened the Expression of Interest (EOI) process for potential lead grant-holders for our CBDA programme. 

We encourage all applicants to review the updated eligibility criteria before submitting their EOI. You can view a short video that explains the criteria and process in more detail.Opens in a new window

You can view the latest versions of the CBDA application information pack (which explains the application process, requirements and assessment approach) and grant funding agreement. These are only for reference – final versions of the documents and any updates can only be accessed and submitted through Atamis.

• Application information pack (PDF, 893KB)Opens in a new window
• Draft grant funding agreement (PDF, 1MB)Opens in a new window

These documents have been published for the Round 1 competition and are subject to changes before Round 2. We’re sharing them to help organisations plan early as we don’t expect them to change significantly. We'll also be carrying out further market engagement with potential applicants ahead of Round 2.

The CBDA grant competition is designed to be clear, transparent, robust and supportive for applicants. It follows a structured process that gives organisations the opportunity to develop their proposals, receive feedback, and strengthen their applications before final submission and assessment.

The competition includes four main steps.

The grant application process is being run via our eTendering portal, Atamis. This will ensure that the process can be run efficiently, fairly and transparently, and that information will be released to all applicants at the same time.

The stage 1 application window opened on 11 May 2026 for Round 1 areas only via Atamis. Organisations that want to apply will need to register to participate in this process.

View recordings of previous webinars held during the market engagement phase of CBDA.

If you have any feedback, queries or questions about CBDA, you can contact us at [email protected].