A £9m ($18m, €11m) government funding boost for the Citizens Advice service has been exposed as a sham, after the organisation warned it would only compensate for cuts to the service implemented last year.

The money – one of the few concrete measures taken by the Treasury to help individual victims of the credit crunch – was announced with fanfare in May by Alistair Darling, the chancellor, and Caroline Flint, housing minister, after a series of meetings with banks and debt advice groups.