Concerns are growing over the impact of councils' powers to tie funding for legal advice to their corporate plans as it emerged that not-for-profit providers in Leicester face their budget being cut by almost one-third.

The manager of the city's law centre hit out after Leicester City Council launched proposals to slash the budget for advice services from 1.6 million to 1.1 million - the move follows a recent 100,000 saving already made by merging Leicester's law centre and Citizens Advice Bureau.

Glenda Terry branded the cuts 'Draconian', and argued that justice problems arising in areas such as housing and immigration were falling by the wayside because they did not 'appear to fulfil any identifiable corporate aim'.

She said clients in the city - a National Asylum Support Service dispersal zone - would be left 'taking their chance with the diminishing number of private practice firms' that remained, owing to the conflict between justice for the individual and local authority objectives.

Damon Gibbons, head of advice services at Leicester council, said it had launched consultation on the issue after 'best value' inspectors told it to look again at its advice provision in light of its 'central government requirements'.

The council hopes to reach a decision by the end of June.

'We are under a duty to ensure that what we're providing is linked to what we are aiming to achieve as a local authority,' he explained.

But Nony Ardill, policy director of the Legal Action Group, said it now has serious concerns about the growing tendency for statutory bodies to determine the provision of advice services according to their own targets and objectives.

'Leicester City Council's decision to restrict funding to advice that helps achieve its own "corporate aims" is one of the more visible examples of this trend,' she said.

'But the recent initiatives to re-brand the Pensions Service and Connexions [advice and support project for young people] as part of the Community Legal Service are equally worrying.

Clients need and deserve advice services that are wholly independent, without any danger of conflicts of interest.'

Paula Rohan