One in three law centres set to shut down
At least a third of law centres will close if government plans to cut legal aid funding go ahead this autumn, solicitors have predicted.
The warning came after the UK’s largest not-for-profit social welfare law firm, Law for All, went into administration, weeks after the Immigration Advisory Service also collapsed.
Julie Bishop, director of the Law Centres Federation, said 18 of the 56 law centres nationwide were particularly susceptible to closure, because legal aid accounts for more than 60% of their revenue. Legal aid rates will be cut by 10% across the board this October.
Her concerns were echoed by Bob Nightingale, chief executive of the London Legal Support Trust, who added that ‘many more’ than a third were likely to cease trading.
He said: ‘The die was cast when the Legal Services Commission stopped paying legal aid up front, but transferred the cashflow burden from government to provider by paying in arrears. Law centres have no cash reserves for downsizing. The 10% cut will see many off, with many more to follow as the other cuts begin to bite.’
Bishop said the Ministry of Justice’s removal of welfare advice and most debt, employment and housing advice from the scope of legal aid will slash the number of clients receiving help from law centres each year from 120,000, to just 40,000.
‘Where will those unrepresented 80,000 go? Their problems will get worse, which will cost the government more,’ she added.
Paula Twigg, advice services director at the Mary Ward Legal Centre in London, said her centre would ‘probably have to close down’.
She said: ‘At least half our clients want help with benefits, yet that work is going out of scope.’
Anne McNicholas, supervising solicitor at Paddington Law Centre, said it was facing a £45,000 cut in its local authority funding on top of legal aid cuts. She said it was not clear how the centre could survive.
Law Society president John Wotton said that the law centre closures would mean there was ‘no true access to justice’.
The MoJ is to provide a £20m fund to help law centres to make the transition to the new tighter funding regime. However, law centre solicitors suggested this would not be enough to keep them afloat.
‘We need permanent, not transitional funding if we are to survive,’ said Twigg.
An MoJ spokesman said the not-for-profit sector was not exempted from the need to make more efficient use of taxpayers’ money within the legal aid system.
He added that the MoJ has set up a transition fund that will make £107m available to the wider voluntary sector.
Last week, social welfare provider Law for All blamed the impending 10% legal aid cuts and the burden of LSC bureaucracy for its decision to go into administration.
An LSC spokesman said its priority was to work with the firm’s administrators to ensure clients receive the help they need.
Earlier in July, national not-for-profit provider the Immigration Advisory Service also went into administration, citing legal aid cuts as a reason for its closure.
Comments
MOJ Incompetence
It's all very well MOJ stating the nfp legal sector should make savings. However what they still haven't explained is how they can justify a 77% cut to the nfp sector, far higher than any cut currently being made, far higher than that not being imposed on the high earners in the Bar. MOJ has not produced a shred of evidence to justify its decisions. It is strongly suspected that they did not know what they were doing at the time the proposals went through and now are tied to them through lack of courage or will to change.
£107m from MOJ? Don't get your hopes up!
I think the £107m fund referred to above is the general Transition Fund provided to help the voluntary sector, administered by the Big Lottery Fund. The funding didn't come from the MoJ, it wasn't just for advice, and it's all been spent!
Grounds for hope ?
Grounds for hope ? Abundant evidence has shown that the realistic policy is certainly not to hope for anything from these people, but to resist with all legal means at our disposal.
Defending the Status Quo "Again"?
As a legal solicitor from the ethnic minority, I am again surprised that no one seems to have the bottle to question what the advice centes and NFP sector have done with all the grants and funding received over the last 10 years when, the economy was not in such a poor state.
There seems to be this very middle class assumption that some how advice agencies such as LFA, CABX and Law centres were doing a good job.
If many of your readers took the time to talk to people within different communities, they would realise that these agencies used many communities as away of securing funding. They failed to engage these communities by employing talented people from within these communities.
As a social welfare solicitors, I attended too many inclusion network meetings were I was the only representative from the BME community, yet they would talk about delivering to communities they did not represent.
I do not trust the cuts to the NFP and legal aid, however with the closure of many nfp the strangle hold will be broken. Hopefully many community groups representing particular ethnic minority groups will have an opportunity to tender for funds that will be used to engage and recruit from within the communities and ensue that money is spent on delivering advice services within their community and not on the salaries of CABx, Law Centre and other nfp managers.
- these agencies used many
- these agencies used many communities as a way of securing funding -
exactly.
White middle class bleeding hearts - living off public funding with no real interest in the outcomes - as long as they can still maintain their bobo lifestyles, and live in areas where they are far away from the people they 'help'.
Sensible debate ?
That`s the trouble nowadays. Someone raises a serious point about representation and the nearest tabloid reader steams in to abuse the vast majority (who are not after all the management) trying to do a hard job conscientiously and "living off public funding" as though that`s some kind of crime. I do not know what a "bobo" lifestyle is, but it is certain that the vast majority of nfp workers are not earning a twentieth as much as those who not only royally screwed up our whole economy but were only out for themselves in the first place.
Its called : having a sense of proportion.
Sensible Debate/ defending Status Quo
It is important for us to recognise that many advice agencies (CABX as number1) wasted a lot of money and failed to address the issue of social exclusion.
I am aware of a number of legal aid firms that attempted to work with local agencies & CABx's to increase advice services. They rejected help including allowing firms to place solicitors within their offices to help with advice services.
I am not a Tory supporter and worry about the cuts to legal aid and nfp sector, however cuts do not always mean less service. If the funding is distributed to include groups that had been left out this could mean a better service directed within those communities.
Also I see no reason why legal aid firms do not tender for some of the local advice contracts.
There seems to be a massive
There seems to be a massive misconception in the suggestion above that the demise of the nfp sector will somehow lead to communities being able to tend for funds themselves. I'm afraid you just don't get it-the funds are all disappearing. In addition if you actually bother to check with the communities, they do support their law centres and CAB and they are getting an excellent service from them, far cheaper than private practice and often too a much higher standard.
"...just don't get it?
Many of us located within these communities wrongly or rightly perceive agencies such as the CABx and many other nfp agencies as White, Middle Class, Patronising and disconnected.
There is no evidence that “they are getting an excellent service”. Independent research in 2009 showed that over 60% of CABx clients were not satisfied with the service. This is never discussed or raised leading to people spinning this idea of an excellent service.
There is no evidence that they are more efficient or provide a better service than the private sector. People seem to forget that Legal Aid solicitor firms are private sector, and many of us provide a very good service.
In many regions CABx’s received over 75% of local authority funds for advice services, even though they were not being used or delivering services to particular communities.
Something had to change and we can not just keep pouring money into agencies simply because they have the resources to employ people who can write a good grant application.
The sad thing is that many of the nfp including CABx have given the present government the opportunity to use their failures and as an excuse to cut funding.
Double standards
Who is patronising whom? It sounds as if because one has the education to be a solicitor one can look down on the CABx and make assumptions based on stereotypes as to the make up of their staff and the quality of their work. Let him who is without sin etc... Perhaps we all should be a little suspicious of our own virtue?