The extra funding will allow the charity's bureau network to stay open for approximately 170,000 additional hours, benefiting around 600,000 extra clients during the 14 month period to the end of March 2010.
The funding was announced by the chancellor in November's Pre Budget Report and makes up a substantial part of the total £15 million allocated for boosting debt advice across the sector.
Citizens Advice has seen a large increase in enquiries linked to the downturn, with sharp rises in people seeking advice on redundancy, benefits and mortgage and secured loan arrears. Last year (Apr 2007-Mar 2008) the charity dealt with 5.54 million issues overall and fears this will grow further as more people lose their jobs, get further into debt and risk losing their homes.
The Citizens Advice bureau network currently deals with 450 new cases involving mortgage arrears and 475 new redundancy enquiries every working day.
As well as seeing a 125% increase in redundancy enquiries between April and November 2008, daily enquiries about Job Seekers Allowance rose by 66% in the same period.
Significant increases were also seen in enquiries about bankruptcy, Council Tax debts, fuel debts and rent arrears to private landlords.
