Trustees Report 2010/2011

 

Welcome to our Annual Report for 2010/2011, which covers our 31st year of providing free independent legal advice to the people of Swindon and Wiltshire. This report covers our activities for the period April 2010 to March 2011 and as with previous reports, I will also comment on some of our more recent successes and challenges.

 

The Wiltshire Law Centre is a registered charity, which was established in 1981 and now provides free, independent legal advice in Welfare Benefits, Housing, Debt, Employment and Discrimination to people on low incomes.   

 

We deal with the wide range of benefits issues, such as Child Tax Credits, Working Tax Credits, Employment Support Allowance, Incapacity Benefit and Disability Living Allowance. We also assist with Social Security appeals, representation at tribunals and court hearings.   

We deal with a wide range of housing issues for Council tenants and private tenants. Problems with housing associations, housing benefit queries and claims, issues with landlords regarding quality of accommodation especially for special needs clients, mortgage arrears and repossession are all dealt with at the Law Centre.

 

We offer advice to clients on all aspects of debt including Council Tax arrears and dealing with bailiffs. We can help clients petition for bankruptcy and apply for Debt Relief Orders.

 

In November 2010 we started to provide all aspects of Employment advice across Swindon and Wiltshire. 

 

Our Welfare Benefits, Housing, Debt and Employment service is funded by the Legal Services Commission. The nature of this funding means that the service is unfortunately only available for clients who are eligible for Legal Aid, which by definition means only people with very low disposable incomes can qualify.

Discrimination advice is funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and is free to all clients regardless of their income and means. The funding for this service ends in March 2012.

We have a contract with Swindon Borough Council to assist Swindon residents at court facing repossession hearings.

We have also benefited from a grant from the Community Foundation for Wiltshire & Swindon that assists greatly with our staff training costs

 

During the period April 2010 through to March 2011, the Law Centre opened 1369 individual client case files, which is just over 26 per week. Surprisingly, this is slightly less than the previous corresponding 12 months period. Housing issues accounted for 33% of our work; Welfare Benefits was 23%, which was significantly down on the previous 12 months; Debt 38% (5% up on last year) and Employment/Discrimination (as a new service) was 6%.

We closed 1015 cases (74% of the total) and carried over 324 open cases through to April 2011. We still helped clients claim over £1M in welfare benefits entitlements, much of which is largely spent back in the local economy, and assisted in reducing client debts by £1M.

As with previous years the 2010/2011 period offered us some significant challenges:

 

In February 2010 the Legal Services Commission invited bids from existing and new suppliers of legal aid services for contracts to deliver social welfare law services across the UK. We could not underestimate the significance of this event; an unsuccessful bid could have meant the closure of the Law Centre! Equally, the nature of the tender made it very difficult to consider partner working and we had to bid independently and at the expense of other local agencies.  We submitted our bid in April 2010 and I am relived to say that we were successful. We were awarded a significant contract that allowed us to increase the provision of free legal advice in Debt, Welfare Benefits, Housing and Employment to clients who are eligible for Legal Aid.  To ensure we met the demands of this new contract we recruited two new staff that joined the team in November. At that point we had 9 caseworkers who were all experts in their specialist areas of law.   Also, in November 2010, as part of a deal with a London firm of solicitors, we had a Community Care specialist providing free advice at the Law Centre one day a week. 

 

It was not long after this fantastic contract award that we received the very bad news that the Government was seeking to save £350M from the legal aid bill and that it would do this by taking out of the scope of legal aid, all the areas of social welfare law (Debt, Welfare Benefits and Employment) that the Law Centre specialises in. Most of the Housing work would go to. If the cuts went through unchallenged, the Wiltshire Law Centre could be forced to close its doors at the end of 2012 unless we could find significant alternative funding, which would be hugely difficult at a time when the whole funding market place would be severely under pressure. As I write this report, it has just been announced that social welfare law will indeed be removed from the scope of legal aid and now we and our clients face a very uncertain future.

Our contract with the EHRC is not as large as that with the LSC but it’s still very important. The contract reporting to the EHRC has been onerous to say the least and we (as well as most other EHRC providers) have been virtually held to ransom over payments. As I write money is still outstanding through no fault of our own. Thankfully we do not have to rely entirely on this income and we still provide a service regardless.

 

It is perhaps a cliché to say that we could not function without the support our funders and although we seem to jump through more hoops each year, we are grateful to the staff on the ground, especially at the Legal Services Commission, for their continued support. 

 

Last year I reported that our finances are healthy; unfortunately this year they are not. Recently we experienced a glitch in our performance in our LSC funded contracts which resulted in demand for repayment of a significant sum of money that the LSC felt should be repaid at the earliest opportunity. This really came about because of increased diligence within the National Audit Office over how public money was spent. Unfortunately, this repayment was a huge drain on our cash reserves. I am pleased to report that we have since performed ourselves back into a position where the LSC owes us money again and we will be securing that payment shortly. As a result we are no longer maintaining reserves equating to 3 months unrestricted expenditure, but we are working towards this again. 

 

I would like to wholeheartedly thank our staff and volunteers for all their efforts in working with our clients to fight injustice and social exclusion. In the current economic situation, circumstances are even more difficult than ever before. Each staff member and volunteer has played a vital part in making the Law Centre a success. Even in these uncertain times we still have 8 Caseworkers with over 50 years of experience between them.

 

Our volunteers continue to make a fantastic contribution especially with admin and reception tasks, and we will come to rely more heavily on them as the uncertain funding climate continues.

 

I would also like to express my thanks to my fellow Trustees, all of whom have a wealth of experience in commercial areas such as law, finance and personnel. Their knowledge of the wider ranging issues that can affect the Law Centre and their commitment is truly appreciated. 

 

 

Mark Clare, Chair of Trustees