UK legal funding & legal aid cuts Omnibus

Camden Community Law Centre in London has been forced to turn away clients due to a lack of funding. Funding which was previously available from the local council had been awarded to the Mary Ward Legal Centre instead of the Camden Community Law Centre. The severe shortages suffered by the centre as a result of this funding cut has forced the Camden centre to reduce its drop-in sessions from 18 to 9 hours, to cut its free telephone service from 36 to 18 hours and to let three full-time staff members go.

An immigration case worker stated that, “we can’t see everybody. We have to turn 40 to 50 per cent of people away as we don’t have the capacity to give them advice. Legal fees are expensive, most people on low and middle income can’t afford legal services”. The Camden Council has stated that it is working with the Camden Law Centre to develop new sources of funding”.

Click here to read an article from the Hampstead & Highgate Express about the funding cut.

Meanwhile, a family aid agency that helps 150 families across west Belfast has said it will try to fight closure after the Department of Education cut its funding. Integrated Services for Children and Young People (ISCYP), which operates four bases in the Falls, Andersonstown, Shankill and Upper Springfield Roads, has been told that it will not receive any more funding after September 2012.  

Click here to read a Belfast Telegraph article about the funding cut to ISCYP.

A UK body that represents court workers has also warned that court services are under pressure following "court closures, financial constraint and a curtailment of legal aid" which is having a "negative impact on the administration of justice." Click here to read a Belfast Telegraph article about the issue.

The Financial Times reported last week that lawyers are warning that from April there will be a steep increase in the number of self-representing litigants after legal aid cuts start to come into effect.   District Judge Richard Chapman said: “Over the last couple of years [we have seen] a significant increase in self-representing litigants – who don’t have the benefit of any legal advice and we anticipate that from next year there will be more and more, as legal aid becomes less available”. Judge Chapman said that this was a concern because cases involving self-representing litigants took longer, because they were not familiar with the law. Mr Justice Ryder, a judge who is in charge of the modernisation of family justice, is quoted as saying at a Public Child Care Law Conference that self-representing parent litigants "will not have had the benefit of legal advice to identify solutions to their problems on the the merits and demerits of their proposals."

Click here to read more the full Financial Times article.

 

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