Law in the cities
James Sandbach looks at the problems facing advice services in the Core Cities and assesses how maintaining and improving them might fit within the devolution agenda that is set to hand those cities’ local authorities increasing spending and revenue-raising powers.
Compared with other major European non-capital and regional cities, the UK Core Cities are performing poorly, with high levels of economic and social deprivation, and almost no fiscal autonomy.
One of the consequences of the civil legal aid reforms over the previous parliament has been the complete demise of Community Legal Advice Centres (CLACs), which were a key plank of the previous Labour government’s urban social policy, involving large-scale co-commissioning between city councils and the legal aid contracting system to supply a range of advice services under one roof and structure. When combined with the contraction of Core City
1The city council leaderships of Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, and Sheffield all work together as part of the Core Cities group. council budgets, the loss of CLAC contracts means advice provision across our Core Cities has had to be radically reshaped. Key Law Centres have either withered or morphed into something different. But our cities have also been morphing and it is important that we understand how in order to address access to justice within them.
2See RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) City Growth Commission: www.thersa.org/action-and-research/rsa-projects/public-services-and-communities-folder/city-growth-commissionGrowth and division
Reviving the Core Cities has been a central aspiration of successive governments’ economic strategies, with Whitehall increasingly handing over key policy levers to the cities themselves. City centres in Birmingham and Manchester have been transformed by large-scale investment; Sheffield and other former industrial cities have enjoyed strong employment growth; and other Core Cities such as Bristol have seen steady population increases. Both current and recent governments have approached investing in Core Cities’ connectivity and infrastructure, and establishing a rebalanced, city-led economic model, as critical to the longterm sustainability of the national economy, although – as part of the Northern Powerhouse agenda – they have been pushed from the cities themselves into turning this into a strategy for ‘City Deals’ and devolution for city regions.
However, this is also very much a series of ‘tales of two cities’ as the effects of the previous de-industrialisation decades still lie all around the urban landscape and four of the Core Cities are among the 20 local authority districts with the highest proportion of their neighbourhoods in the most deprived 10 per cent of neighbourhoods nationally on the (English) Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015.
5The English indices of deprivation 2015: statistical release, Department for Communities and Local Government, 30 September 2015. Compared with other major European non-capital and regional cities, the UK Core Cities are performing poorly, with high levels of economic and social deprivation, and almost no fiscal autonomy. Welfare benefits cuts, social housing reforms and depressed wages are having the greatest impact in these deprived areas and neighbourhoods. At the same time, traditional sources of help for deprived communities, such as city council-funded welfare rights and advice services, are under intense pressure and financial squeezes. While there may be growth in the Core Cities, it is not inclusive growth.
Devolution deals and advice sector funding
Can devolution turn this around?
6For detail on devolution deals see www.local.gov.uk/devolution Next year, the city regions will elect new executive mayors whose functions will merge with those of police and crime commissioners (PCCs), and some opposition MPs see these high-profile roles as their own paths back to public office and leadership. Some city region authorities, such as Greater Manchester, are taking with them large slices of NHS and other budgets, not only for transport and infrastructure but also for skills. City councils are also preparing to retain more locally raised money through new Treasury rules that will allow 100 per cent retention of business rates, intended to give cities the investment flexibility and incentives to support economic growth.
Extract from Core Cities UK chair Judith Blake’s letter to new prime minister Theresa May
… [T]he solution is to understand the link between social and economic policy – too often they are seen as separate. We must also look at the role … high quality public services play in connecting people to the labour market …
This is not a call to spend more, it is a call to spend differently and more efficiently – connecting up services and agencies, reducing duplication and waste, improving outcomes and life chances. As cities we have a significant and successful track record in delivering public service reform through a ‘place-based approach’ …
The agenda for Core Cities is not just about growth, but also about integrating growth with economic and social justice. A number of city councils and metropolitan authorities are experimenting with new and different ways of commissioning and delivering public services, using funding from Troubled Families, the Better Care Fund, discretionary welfare spending and other central funding streams. A big challenge here, though, is whether city councils and their ‘combined authorities’ for city regions will step up to the plate and take on the funding of areas of specialist advice and legal support provision from which Whitehall has increasingly withdrawn. The PCC functions already have a range of responsibilities for commissioning local justice services: it is not just policing and the number of ‘bobbies on the beat’ that PCCs oversee and whose ultimate budgets they control, but increasingly the wider criminal justice system and emergency services. They can also focus chunks of their budgets on prevention and crime reduction strategies and, since 2014, commissioners have also had responsibility for support to victims and restorative justice programmes, as well as aspects of offender management and rehabilitation work.
A devolved approach to access to justice could build on existing city-wide delivery structures and partnerships. City councils are already significant funders of advice. In terms of comparator Core Cities, current levels of investment range from around £650,000 a year in Bristol to over £1m a year in Sheffield. The delivery models across the Core Cities are generally centre-based with a community outreach officer, and take a universal approach to access. Advice provision is either delivered by consortia, such as the Leeds Advice Consortium, or a single lead organisation, such as the Sheffield Citizens Advice and Law Centre. All advice providers have had to find more economical operating models, like sharing premises with other council services.
However, there is one potential area of tension. An essential function of public interest and social welfare advice and advocacy work is to use the law to challenge unfair decisions by public authorities, whether these be about housing allocations or evictions, discretionary welfare support, council bailiff warrants, assessments and rights under community care legislation (ie the Care Act 2014), special educational needs or breach of Equality Act 2010 duties. Why should councils make life harder for themselves by funding judicial reviews against decisions taken at a local authority administrative level, especially at a time when local government in-house legal services teams are so stretched? There is no obvious resolution to this. What incentives could be introduced to encourage councils to fund or commission a full spectrum of independent advice services, from multichannel generalist information and advice (which help make council services work) to more specialist areas of legal advice, representation and advocacy on public law and services issues (which help challenge council decisions)?
Of course, it can be argued that openness to challenge and better legal proofing of council schemes, whether statutory or discretionary, leads to better delivery, public services design and policy implementation all around. It can also be argued that councils should have a stake in the legal capabilities/public legal education agenda: if part of the devolution revolution is that larger councils take over the adult skills and employment support systems from central government agencies, then addressing key ‘life skills’ gaps in areas like managing tenancies or mortgages, understanding employment rights and tax, how to access child support, and online dispute resolution, may all become core business for local authorities.
In looking at where devolution goes next, all eyes tend to focus on Manchester, which has the most advanced settlement. Interestingly, a new Greater Manchester Law Centre opened its doors last month (see pages 3 and 4 of this issue); however, the steering committee is not in the first instance looking to public funding for the model, but rather to crowdfunding, law firm contributions and other sources.
7For more information see www.gmlaw.org.uk The viability of this model will also affect the future landscape of law in the city.
LAG believes that access to justice and legal aid funding should remain a central government responsibility, while also being open to new local partnerships and delivery structures. The debate is about how we embed law and social welfare rights and services in the community, recognising that the courts and tribunal centres, local legal sectors, circuits and local law societies as well as university law schools are all critical parts of Core Cities’ infrastructures. No one model can provide all the answers and given the overall shortage of public funding, social enterprise also has an important role. ■
Extract from RSA City Growth Commission report, Unleashing metro growth: final recommendations of the City Growth Commission (October 2014, page 18)
… Our trusted legal system forms the backbone of many international contracts; our mature and transparent legislative system helps to minimise political risk for investors over the long term; our independent Bank of England depoliticises our monetary policy, and, balanced regulation provides a stable platform for competition in global markets.
However, the configuration of our political economy – while encouraging this healthy business environment at the aggregate level – is, in our view, holding our metros back …
… The UK has the most centralised system of public finance of any major OECD country …
… Working with local partners to support growth and deliver high quality outcomes, metros need to be empowered to shift resources into more preventative and productive investment, helping to tackle the longterm causes of social inequality …