With the recession hanging over us debt is on many people's minds. Housing, money, and employment worries can be enormously stressful, especially if you don't know where to turn to for support. Colchester Borough Council has been helping the Colchester residents by giving advice about jobs, businesses, money concerns and to people are worried they will lose their homes.

Since the beginning of 2008, Britain's businesses and economy has been affected by the biggest recession since the very early 90‘s. Nearly everyone has been hit by it and companies all around the UK have had to cut jobs to try and save the money that they have been losing. However, many small companies have not survived the recession as they could not handle the money losses and have unfortunately had to go into administration. The house prices have fallen by almost 3% in the UK over the past year, and the banks have stopped giving out big loans like they used to. This is proof of the fall in the economy.

The level of youth unemployment has risen to 12.4% among 18-24 year olds. The number of people out of work overall in the UK however, is the worst since 1995. It increased by a total of 220,000 in just 3months leading up to June 2009 taking the total jobless rate to 7.8%.

To support the local people and businesses that have been hit by the recession, the University of Essex has been awarded £328,000. It is one of 58 UK higher education institutions that have been awarded cash from the Economic Challenge Investment Fund (ECIF). Their aim is to provide the universities with extra resources so that they can respond quickly to the current economic downturn. Working in partnership with Colchester Borough Council and other local universities and businesses, the University will run a programme to support those who are returning to work, the recently unemployed, new graduates, and small businesses.

Spending even a small amount of money can help your business become more popular and gain more customers, which effectively earns your company more money. You can do this by promoting your company on the Internet for a small fee. The best way to do this is to advertise your business with Activ Colchester, the most comprehensive guide to Colchester on the Internet.

All it takes is a small sum of money, less than advertising for one night in a local paper, and this will gain you valuable advertising space on Colchester's best local community website. Spending this small amount to promote your company on the Internet will make sure that more people see your company, and divert them to your website, which could lead to your company gaining more customers. Activ Colchester is a local website made for the community and will therefore mean that a most of the people that visit the website will be from in and around Colchester and will potentially boost your reputation with the local residents.

By using Activ Colchester to promote your company, you are potentially helping to put Colchester in a better place to fight the recession and this will also help your own business as you will be getting more exposure on the Internet, which means you will be potentially, gaining more customers.