In depth: National Lottery throws lifeline to legal advice charities

Advice sector organisations, funders and members of the legal community gathered at Coin Street Conference Centre in London this week to celebrate a new access to justice initiative – funded by the National Lottery.

The Improving Lives Through Advice (ILTA) grant programme, hosted by the Access to Justice Foundation, will provide five-year core funding to 59 frontline legal advice charities across England.

Why is this new funding programme needed? Clare Carter, chief executive of the Access to Justice Foundation, explained on Wednesday that the need for social welfare advice is huge. But while demand for advice has surged as a result of the pandemic, economic climate and cost-of-living crisis, funding has fallen.

There is no single solution or source of funding that can resolve everything, Carter said. But it was clear to the Access to Justice Foundation that sufficient additional resources were needed to support the advice sector to cope with the additional demand for their services.

The foundation approached the National Lottery Community Fund, the UK’s largest community funder. The National Community Lottery Fund receives roughly 40% of the money raised by National Lottery ticket sales.

'Improving Lives Through Advice is a bold step in the journey to fairer access to justice'

Phil Chamberlain, National Lottery Community Fund

The foundation explained the impact that advice can have on communities and how the advice sector is uniquely placed to provide solutions to entrenched issues that communities are facing. ‘Luckily, they agreed with us,’ Carter said.

The National Lottery Community Fund is supporting ILTA to the tune of £30m.

‘Improving Lives Through Advice is a bold step in the journey to fairer access to justice,’ said Phil Chamberlain, England director for the National Lottery Community Fund.

Grants are an essential source of funding for advice providers. According to Access to Justice Foundation data, 15% of law centres’ total income in 2019/20 came from foundations and 9% from National Lottery grants.

‘We know as a funder, short grant cycles can direct leadership into a cycle of constant fundraising. With a five-year grant, what difference will this make on your ability to focus on other areas?’ Shabana Aslam, the Access to Justice Foundation’s grants director, asked representatives from frontline organisations during a panel discussion.

A five-year grant will give Working Families, a national charity for working parents and carers, a sense of stability and allow the organisation to look at other forms of funding and diversify its income, replied chief executive Jane van Zyl.

A five-year grant will be hugely helpful to FISCUS, which provides advice, crisis support and community services in Sunderland and the wider north-east, in terms of staff recruitment and retention.

‘That’s so important to us as a small independent charity,’ said CEO Anita Heskett-Saddington. ‘We’re fighting against much bigger housing associations and local authorities offering eye-watering wages compared to what we can offer our staff.’

ILTA has enabled FISCUS to recruit its first advice sector manager ‘which has given me massive breathing space’, Heskett-Saddington said. ‘When you’ve got that breathing space, you’ve got time to think. Since we have got ILTA, I have managed to get back to basics, get some work done.’

The event heard about the charity’s crowdfunder to build a children’s kitchen from a recycled shipping container to alleviate holiday hunger.

‘Sometimes we have got good ideas sitting on the boil and we have not got time to facilitate or move them forward,’ Heskett-Saddington said. The ‘breathing space’ afforded by ILTA allows FISCUS to connect with other partners, think about its aims, objectives and priorities, and build an evidence base to move forward.

The Ministry of Justice has not financially contributed to ILTA but present at Wednesday’s event was Farah Ziaulla, director of legal aid, legal support and dispute resolution.

She said the ministry recognises the ‘massive and hugely important role’ played by the advice sector in providing access to justice. ‘You understand what’s needed in your own community and that there is a diverse range of needs and it is absolutely not one-size-fits-all,’ Ziaulla said.

To advise ministers and understand what is needed, Ziaulla is ‘reliant on partners and stakeholders like yourselves to be guiding that conversation’.

Ziaulla described the justice system as a ‘core public service’ which can be a ‘real lifeline’ when people are at their most vulnerable and need independent, objective advice delivered in a compassionate way.

‘Core public services’ should surely be funded via general taxation, some will argue – but that is a debate for another day.

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