Holy Trinity Church in Frome, is today celebrating after being awarded over £43,000 in National Lottery funding to support its work with people facing debt within our community. The Debt Centre, run in partnership with Christians Against Poverty, is based at Holy Trinity Church and will use the money to provide debt solutions for anyone with debt issues.

Debt Centre Manager Phil Gray has been running the centre since 2019 and is supported by 8 volunteers. It was founded by the Church Board of Trustees after they realised that the quality of life and the wellbeing of many families and individuals were being negatively affected by debt and Christians Against Poverty had the ability provide solutions to enable them to become debt free.

The Debt Centre provides in-person appointments with clients and potential clients in their own homes or at the church to identify the individual needs. Those who have manageable debt are given direct help to enable them to keep control of their own finances. Clients with unmanageable debt engage with Christians Against Poverty who then consider the best option for the client to become debt free.

The new funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will enable the Debt Centre to deliver its debt service for a further three years with a twenty percent increase in its capacity.

At the same time, the team will be able to press on with plans to provide a Budgeting Course free to clients and non-clients alike and to enable working with other Frome Based agencies to offer the Money Course where the need has been identified.

Debt Centre Manager, Phil Gray, says: "We're delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to continue the core debt work and also provide the Money Course to our community and develop our services further as we identify the needs. This is important because debt takes the joy out of life and becomes a great mental strain on families as well as individuals and if we can help people with budgeting we can help prevent debt before it becomes a problem" The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its new strategy, 'It starts with community', which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.

As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.

National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year The National Lottery Community Fund was able to distribute over half a billion pounds (£615.4 million) of life-changing funding to communities. To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk