James Sandbach reports on new initiatives to support London’s advice sector.
Unsurprisingly, London has played a pivotal role in the development of the advice sector, with the first Citizens Advice Bureaux, the establishment of the first Law Centre (North Kensington), innovation in legal aid, and the priming of structured pro bono schemes from City firms. When compared with the ‘
advice deserts’ that have become an all too familiar feature of English and Welsh counties, London can often look like a veritable oasis. However, being the sector’s epicentre does not mean that London’s advice services are sustainable, let alone fit for purpose to meet Londoners’ needs. And in all the talk of levelling up, policymakers need reminding that some of the highest levels of deprivation and unmet legal needs are found in London – for the advice sector, it is more the capital of demand than the capital of supply.
Like much of the country, London has seen a gradual post-LASPO (Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012) decline, and a LAG report in 2011 warned of the coming storm for its advice sector.
1Fiona Bawdon and Steve Hynes, London advice watch, LAG/Trust for London, December 2011. In 2013, Tim Clark (then CEO of Citizens Advice Barnet) documented the dire consequences of the civil legal aid cuts for non-profit advice agencies and their clients in London.
2Tim Clark, 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, Cass Business School, 2013. The report surveyed 14 Citizens Advice charities and six Law Centres in the immediate aftermath of LASPO. Fifty per cent had seen reductions in funding and services over the past three years, and 10 per cent had had their incomes cut by more than 25 per cent. Three-quarters of respondents said they were cutting services end expenditure in coming months, with 60 per cent planning redundancies and 30 per cent freezing wages. Since then, we have seen the loss of Law Centres in Barnet, Brent, Lambeth, Greenwich and Bromley, as well as other highly-respected agencies like Advising Communities in Southwark and newer ventures such as Law for All. In 2017, a survey of London MPs’ surgeries highlighted increasing demand for legal casework and challenges for onward referrals.
3Mind the gap: an assessment of unmet legal need in London, Hogan Lovells/All-Party Parliamentary Group on Pro Bono, April 2017. See also May 2017 Legal Action 7.In 2019, the
Greater London Authority (GLA), working with the
Advice Services Alliance, commissioned a strategic evaluation of social welfare advice provision across the capital, to identify where the provision of advice could have the greatest impact and the funding challenges and gaps in capacity to meet Londoners’ needs, and to recommend strategic actions to increase the reach and impact of social welfare advice in London. The subsequent
Advising Londoners report (authored by Phil Jew) was published during the pandemic in July 2020 and noted that, against a rising tide of demand, policy change, cuts and digitisation of public services, London’s social welfare advice services were struggling to maintain sustainability. The report had some clear findings:
•London’s advice agencies were oversubscribed and unable to meet demand, a problem that had worsened over the past decade, partly driven by welfare reform and other policy changes.
•It had become a struggle for London’s advice sector to recruit and retain staff, volunteers, leaders and trustees with sufficient skills and experience.
•Across the 32 boroughs, there was no common or consistent approach to commissioning, design, funding and delivery structure for advice provision, and insufficient regional co-ordination and infrastructure for London’s advice sector; services were mostly organised and funded at borough level, and there was a need for more pan-London strategic support and development.
•Cuts had hit the London advice sector over time: over half of respondents said their funding had decreased during the past three years, and the same percentage expected it to fall during the coming three years.
•There were particular gaps in provision for and by Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, as well as shortages of specialist advice and representation, especially in outer London boroughs, where need had been increasing.
•Advice providers had adapted their service delivery models to more telephone and remote advice work (obviously, this was subsequently boosted in the pandemic).
•Pro bono schemes (from firms and law school clinics) were a growing aspect of London’s advice services landscape.
Based on estimates for the UK by the
Low Commission,
4Tackling the advice deficit: a strategy for access to advice and legal support on social welfare law in England and Wales, Low Commission, 2014. the report noted that the funding gap in London was at least £13m. Recommendations from the report included that the GLA, London funders and advice sector partners should work together on a pan-London basis to identify a shared vision and funding strategy for social welfare advice. It also recommended that the GLA should lead on the development of a new social welfare advice hub or unit to co-ordinate strategic action and provision across policy areas, and identified the potential of London-wide recruitment and training of volunteers, trustees, staff and social welfare advice leaders, with training extended to non-advisers (anchor institutions, social hubs etc) to build community capacity and resilience across London.
Towards a new policy framework for London’s advice services
Although not traditionally an advice services funder, following the
Advising Londoners report, the GLA has become increasingly engaged in the sector as a funder of community-based advice services. In 2019, it commissioned the
Child Poverty Action Group to deliver a pilot project embedding welfare rights advisers to assist 11 primary schools in implementing a range of measures to support low-income families. This led to the
Advice in Community Settings Grant Programme, with funding available to establish partnerships between community settings and advice providers (stage 1), and then fund these partnerships to deliver targeted interventions to help families or individuals on low or no incomes to access advice and support (stage 2). However, there was a competitive application process, meaning providers had to clear several hurdles.
Since the publication of the
Advising Londoners report, other events have had an impact, namely the COVID-19 pandemic and now the cost of living crisis. To support London’s recovery from the pandemic, the GLA, in partnership with London councils, brought together leaders of London’s anchor institutions to form the
London Recovery Board, and established a taskforce to oversee and co-ordinate a range of practical initiatives to help drive forward London’s recovery from COVID-19. Through this process, the GLA adopted a set of ‘
recovery missions’, including
•A Robust Safety Net – by 2025, every Londoner is able to access the support they need to prevent financial hardship;
•Mental Health and Wellbeing – by 2025, London will have a quarter of a million wellbeing ambassadors, supporting Londoners where they live, work and play; and
•Building Strong Communities – by 2025, all Londoners will have access to a community hub ensuring that they can volunteer, get support and build strong community networks.
The London Recovery Board then developed an action plan,
Building a fairer city, including proposed actions to ‘increase both the provision and the visibility of financial and welfare advice services to Londoners’ (page 28). The GLA has been exploring various initiatives under the Robust Safety Net mission with commitments to:
•create a single point of access that connects Londoners to a range of advice services (eg, benefits, debt, housing, utilities, immigration) and crisis support (eg, financial support, food);
•help excluded groups access support by embedding council-run, charitable and other relevant services in community settings (eg, schools, faith settings, community food providers, health settings);
•develop a comprehensive local welfare offer in every borough in London that focuses on preventing hardship; and
•establish strategic partnerships involving funders, councils and civil society organisations to plug the existing gaps in crisis support and advice services across London.
For Citizens Advice, the
Advising Londoners report and the GLA’s work have been timely, coinciding with an initiative of the
London Citizens Advice network to develop a programme of ‘enhanced pan-London working’ in response to the challenging funding environment. Following a consultant’s review for London Citizens Advice CEOs, the London network established a steering committee with a new staffing capacity, remit and business plan to develop a more co-ordinated and strategic approach for the 28 separate, independent local Citizens Advice charities (LCAs) across London. This mission is underpinned by a ‘
compact’ that commits to a collegiate approach, working in a joined-up way as one service, sharing information and mutual support, working with pan-London funders and stakeholders, and speaking with one policy voice for London, informed by combined data and evidence. Together, the London Citizens Advice network aims to ‘be more than the sum of our parts’ to develop services, solutions and interventions for Londoners living in hardship or experiencing crisis, engaging with communities, helping clients find a way forward and advocating for their needs with London policymakers. This work is driven forwards by a development manager (yours truly) based at
RCJ Advice.
London Funders has also been getting together and working with the GLA on the strategic recommendations of
Advising Londoners. The
London Legal Support Trust (LLST) leads a London Advice Funders network, and successfully brought together funders in delivering the emergency pandemic funding programme through the
London Community Response. The GLA has also been supporting a strategic co-ordination group looking at the funding and support landscape.
A new partnership approach – putting co-production into practice
Through policy-level discussions, a new partnership approach has been developed between the GLA, London Citizens Advice and LLST that (in contrast to the Advice in Community Settings Grant Programme) removes the bureaucratic burdens of competitive grant bidding/management to focus instead on engagement, impact and delivery. This is a strategic partnership based on the principles of co-production, whereby the advice networks shape the framework and are encouraged to be innovative in community outreach, engagement and delivery systems. It has underpinning principles and objectives, but recognises that one size does not fit all, and different models will emerge in different boroughs. The partnership has been developed as a timely intervention to address the cost of living crisis and to enable a faster mobilisation of the sector’s resources.
The three-way partnership supports LLST’s
Centres of Excellence (COEx) scheme. The GLA sees the purpose of the funding as ‘to protect/boost capacity alongside community outreach/engagement’, building on ‘good synergies between two networks’ to: (i) support London Citizens Advice and LLST COEx networks as ‘community anchors’ where advice and support in dealing with the cost of living can be accessed; and (ii) provide a coherent offer of support to community and grassroots organisations so that they can help their clients/service users to access that advice and support.
The aim is for the London advice networks, working with faith and community groups, to develop capacity so that low-paid or not-in-work individuals and families in London are able to access advice and support that maximises their income, addresses cost of living issues in order to prevent poverty, and secures financial rights and entitlements. National and local policies that are adding to deprivation and cost of living challenges will be identified and solutions proposed, supported by the GLA. An engagement strategy will aim to reach diverse communities to ensure that Londoners receive information and support on claiming their rights and entitlements. To support the partnership, the GLA has made a one-year financial allocation of £2.3m to be split between the strategic partners as follows:
5‘Mayor announces £2.3m for advice services to help Londoners’, Mayor of London press release, 8 July 2022.•LLST allocation – £1.1m to provide funding for COEx to increase generalist and/or specialist advice capacity, cover core operating costs and establish outreach partnerships; and
•London Citizens Advice allocation – £1.2m to cover new adviser posts (crisis prevention and specialist advisers), project management costs, and delivery of ‘Advice First Aid’ training.
The partnership was formally launched on 8 July 2022 at a visit by Mayor Sadiq Khan to Citizens Advice East End, a tri-borough service that covers Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Newham. East London partner agencies were also involved in the launch, including University House, Island Advice and Newham Tamil Welfare Association. The mayor spoke about his commitment to the sector and his own background as a former legal aid practitioner and LAG trustee, councillor and south London MP.
For the two key strategic partners, the emphasis and model of partnership working differs slightly, but with complementary aims and fostering collaboration. For the London Citizens Advice network, new crisis prevention adviser roles (16 full-time equivalents) based in LCAs will work closely with faith and community groups and outreaches to deliver early initial information advice and support, identifying needs and referring to a specialist advice response where needed in parts of London with high demand and/or limited adviser capacity. This will be supplemented by the recruitment of five new specialist advisers, who will take referrals from crisis advisers and resolve complex/specialist legal problems. LCAs will also act as ‘community anchors’, using some of the funding to develop new partnerships with local grassroots/community organisations, and delivering Advice First Aid training to community staff/volunteers to upskill them in identifying advice needs and making onward referrals.
LLST has involved 15 COEx and two community organisations in the partnership; of the 15 COEx, seven are Law Centres and the remainder are independent advice agencies. Through this work, the COEx network will increase advice capacity by the equivalent of approximately 12 full-time specialist legal advisers and seven community navigators. Across both networks, the expectation is that new referral pathways (eg, between London LCAs and COEx) and community partnerships will be developed. The approach aims to extend the reach of advice services on a more pan-London basis and to develop the advice sector workforce. The longer-term advice workforce development challenges have been explored in a recent report commissioned by Trust for London, Paul Hamlyn and LLST,
6Dr Anne Rathbone, Mark Foster and Patrick Nyikavaranda, Addressing the skills gap within advice services, 12 May 2022. which has highlighted the need for closer connection training and development pathways between advice services and community development work.
As the cost of living crisis starts to really bite this autumn, this partnership lays a strong foundation for London’s advice sector to respond to new challenges. We hope this partnership will be the start of a period of renewed investment and development in London’s advice services, as well as collaboration between advice agencies, statutory bodies and community partners. The model is one that other commissioners in England and Wales might consider following.