Advice Fund only covers half of charities in need

LAG has learnt that applications to the Advice Services Fund, which was established by the Cabinet Office to offset the impact of the cuts on advice centres in the current year, have outweighed the cash available by more than double.

A total of £16.8m was allocated for England but, according to letters sent to unsuccessful bidders which have been seen by LAG, 622 applications were received worth £35m. In a letter to those rejected, the Big Fund - which is administering the cash on behalf of the government - made it clear that charities which needed money would have to do without: 'Given the competitive nature of this programme and with a budget of £16.8million, we were unable to offer grants to all of the worthwhile applications we have received.'


The balance of the £20m fund was divided between Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Applicants had to demonstrate they would receive a cut of ten per cent or more in the current financial year and applied for grants worth between £40,000-70,000. Advice agencies which had been awarded money from the Transition Fund last year were told they would not get priority for Advice Services Fund cash.

Many not for profit (NFP) advice services are being hit with cuts from local government and other funders. Any help is welcome, but the Advice Services Fund is clearly inadequate, as over £80m is due to be cut from legal aid for housing, employment, debt, benefits and other areas of civil law, usually referred to as social welfare law (SWL), from April 2013. Around 300 advice centres, such as Citizens Advice Bureaux and Law Centres, rely on legal aid income to provide specialist legal advice services in SWL. LAG is calling for the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is due to reach the report stage in the House of Lords next week, to be amended to bring back into scope employment, benefits, housing and other areas of civil law that the government plans to cut.


The Transition Fund distributed £105m in grants to charities and other NFP organisations between March and May 2011. Its aim was to assist them to 'adjust to the new spending environment'. The fund was open to all charitable and NFP organisations. LAG has spoken to a number of advice organisations which have lost out on Advice Services Fund grants because they had previously received Transition Fund money. They have been placed on a reserve list for a grant from the fund, but they point out that unlike the Advice Services Fund, the Transition Fund was not intended to replace cash lost from legal aid or other funding intended for providing services to the public.


A review of advice services is also being undertaken by the Cabinet Office. Advice centres across the UK are facing a crisis of shrinking grants and contracts at a time when the demand for their services is rising. The review, which was announced by Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society, in November last year, shows that the government at least recognises this. However, it will have to be backed up with a long term financial commitment to the advice sector if it is to have any credibility. The one-off £20m Advice Services Fund in the current financial year does not achieve this and risks appearing to be little more than a bribe to buy off opposition to the legal aid cuts and to secure a government majority for the Legal Aid Bill.

Nottingham rethinking advice?

Last week people from the advice world travelled to Nottingham to be taken on a journey through systems thinking (to paraphrase the blurb), the new model of planning advice services which AdviceUK, the national organisation representing independent advice centres, is pushing. While it sounds like the jargon of management speak, the Nottingham experience seems to demonstrate that the approach is worth looking at, though in Nottingham it is limited in the areas of law it covers and does not include private sector solicitors.

Nottingham City Council currently spends £3m on advice services. These are spread across an in-house welfare rights team, which specialises in benefits and debt, and the voluntary sector. A Law Centre®, a Citizens Advice Bureau, a Housing Advice Centre and an independent advice centre have signed up with the council for this experiment in advice services planning. Four hundred and eighty four interviews with clients were observed by researchers. What they found was that 280 interviews dealt with a life event such as a client losing his/her job and needing advice on benefits. The big revelation was that 204 interviews were to do with a failure in the system - in other words government agencies getting it wrong.

An example of a systems failure given by the council is the procedure over benefit appeal tribunals. Once a client appeals, a TAS1 form is sent to him/her which s/he has to respond to within 14 days. Many do not. This results in advisers having to apply to reinstate the appeal. AdviceUK argues that by adopting a systems thinking approach such waste can be reduced by joint working and the spare capacity which is freed up can then be used to improve services.

The researchers found that 15 per cent of clients presented with multiple problems. They also found evidence of the need to triage cases. For example, straightforward enquiries, which would only take a few minutes to deal with, were having to join the same waiting list of a few weeks for interviews as those clients with more complex cases.

A few alarm bells did ring when LAG interviewed advice workers at the Town Hall event. There seemed to be very little referral to solicitors, apart from some cases going to the Law Centre. Even in disrepair cases, advisers seemed to believe that expert reports and experience of litigation were not generally necessary. Another problem was the lack of understanding regarding the potential for conflicts of interest with council-run advice services.

What the Nottingham experience does show is that systems thinking can be used to improve advice services by identifying waste caused by systemic failures and act as a way to galvanise services to work more effectively together. The overriding impression of the Nottingham experience is that the advice sector had a unity of purpose to serve people more efficiently. This is perhaps the systems thinking project's most useful achievement.