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Advice centres face closure
Massive cuts to grants plan could see law and advice centres close down
ADVICE centres which offer help to some of the most vulnerable people in Camden face closure after the Town Hall announced plans for massive cuts to their funding.
The Camden Community Law Centre, in Prince of Wales Road, Kentish Town, gives advice to people on debt, housing, benefits, asylum and disability rights. The service was recently commended for its work by a team of Whitehall inspectors. But its future is in jeopardy following an announcement last week by the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition at the Town Hall that they plan to freeze the grants budget and change the bodies who receive grants.
The plans will affect other, similar services including the borough’s three Citizens Advice Bureaux and leading disabled rights body Disability in Camden (Disc).
The council’s executive decided at a meeting last Wednesday to review grants worth around £8 million – around 40 per cent of the annual Voluntary and Community Sector’s £20 million budget – and are planning to change the groups who receive the bulk of the cash. The meeting agreed a cut in funding for advice agencies from £1.6 million this year to £930,000 next year.
The centre’s housing advice officer Sarver Lalljee said the decision would hit the most needy.
He said: “It is likely that some of the most vulnerable residents – including people on benefits or very low incomes, people with disabilities or poor mental health will no longer be able to get help with basic problems such as keeping a roof over their heads, unfair dismissal, entitlement to welfare benefits, disability rights, debt or immigration.
“This will lead to an increase in the level of poverty and greater pressure on very vulnerable households.”
And the news comes as the Legal Services Commission, who offer support to the centre, has been told to lower the money paid to groups offering legal aid services.
Conservative Councillor and executive member for equalities and community development Andrew Marshall said he believed that often funding had been given out to groups on the strength of the fact the groups had been given money in the past, and not on the work they are doing.
He said: “The money often goes to good organisations but sometimes this is a historical decision not a logical one. We are in a difficult budget position. We have frozen the funding in cash terms.”
Cllr Marshall added representatives from the Law centre were due to meet him in November to discuss their concerns.
Labour councillor Theo Blackwell, whose brief when the Labour Party held the Town Hall before May’s elections included the voluntary sector, said: “I am shocked to see these cuts going through. We always supported the voluntary sector. It was a key tool to reduce inequality.”
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