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London advice sector under pressure
This column documents evidence of the effect of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012. Readers are invited to send in relevant information for publication. E-mail: vwilliams@lag.org.uk using the message title ‘Legal aid cuts impact statement’. A recent report documents the dire consequences of the civil legal aid cuts on not for profit advice agencies and their clients in London. Tim Clark, chief executive of Barnet Citizens Advice Bureau and a (then) director of Barnet Law Centre®, surveyed 14 bureaux and six Law Centres in London in August 2013. Fifty per cent had seen a reduction in funding and services over the past three years and ten per cent had incomes cut by more than 25 per cent. As a result, 75 per cent of respondents intended to cut expenditure over the next six months from the time of the survey, while 60 per cent were planning redundancies and 30 per cent would be freezing wages.
To cope with the funding crisis, the majority reported that they intended to use more volunteers as well as increasing the use of telephone and web-based services. Worryingly, 40 per cent of respondents (mainly Law Centres as opposed to Citizens Advice Bureaux) will be forced to start charging for advice or are actively considering doing so.
‘London has some of the greatest need for advice services because of poverty, but is suffering terrible losses in provision due to the civil legal aid cuts … Services have been reduced and organisations are cutting expenditure and this is hugely concerning,’ said Tim Clark.
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An analysis of the impact of Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 on not-for-profit advice agencies in London and their clients was submitted in September 2013 as part of Tim Clark’s MSc in Voluntary Sector Management at the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at the Cass Business School, City University. It is available at:
www.barnetcab.org.uk/images/PDFs/timclark-dissertation2014.pdf.