Where do welfare rights go when they get evicted?

rogerblack

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-21290752

Earlier this week staff from Harlow Welfare Rights and Advice found the locks changed at their offices.
Harlow Council said it had taken action because it was owed £125,000 by the charity, which provides debt advice, work, housing and welfare services.

Sigh.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Clarke has been busy de-funding advice centres in general and specialist advice centres in particular since last year, this to include CAB. By April of this year the recent legal aid reforms take full effect and all but abolish specialist help. The caseload in general and the IB transitions have 'lumped' and extra 50% of work on advice centres. Clarke anticipated this coming, and being the benevolent kind of politician he is he made sure that the first to close would be those with specialist capable of at least 1T representation.

Represented specialist 1T's are still running at around 80%, while the non represented show an average national rate of 40%. You can see therefore why the specialist centres were planned to [STRIKE]be de-funded[/STRIKE] go first. The 40% rate itself would I imagine rise up the graph if specialist's and their funding was abundant enough to handle those extra pre-1T appeals, but hey it costs government a combined £450 plus for each appeal hearing, these kind of advice centre closures are one of the ways the state makes sure it does not pay its people what they are entitled to.

If the ATOS LiMA system was allowed by the DWP to work to criteria designed to 'find the truth' then the appeals costed at around £50 mi££ion a year to the public purse would not happen. Its worthy of note that the now majority Labour controlled authority was in the control of the Conservatives last summer when both the cuts to the funding of the centre and the subsequent closure was enacted.

satarical

rogerblack wrote: »

Earlier this week staff from Harlow Welfare Rights and Advice found the locks changed at their offices.
Harlow Council said it had taken action because it was owed £125,000 by the charity, which provides debt advice, work, housing and welfare services.


Sigh.

Well to be honest they don't seem too good at the 'debt advice' bit do they!

If they can't sort out their own debt problems what chance was there of them helping others.

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

Church community Centres? new partnerships with Churches? this can't be allowed to die.
*depressed*

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

What a bloody shame Kenneth Clarke is defunding Advice centres he's a bloody lawyer.

shelllanc

Its dreadful Ive just been made redundant as a welfare rights law advisor that specialised in benefit appeals, theres half the staff going this month from the local cab its as though the government are now taking away the only free help you can have, with the new legal aid cuts meaning charities cannot get legal aid for assisting with complex benefit appeals and applications. Ive set up to assist people who cannot get free help as most of the free help is now oversubscribed. I know our local welfare rights cannot take anyone else on until April, which is no good if your appeal is coming up. If you want help completing a form or with an appeal Im happy to offer what assistance I can for free, but will ask for donation if it gets more complex, as I am now out of work. I worked in the sector appealing ESA and DLA claims to tribunal for 17 months, so have lots of experience.

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

Welfare cuts and cuts to advice centres epitomises to the letter what this government is#nastyparty/
I am thinking of becoming a welfare rights adviser !!! paralegal and this is depressing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9Rx8uTZ0n8
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahBkCnw7k9Y
Justices and the one and only Michael Mansfield qc etc so cogently making their argument for Legal Aid, public sector not being cut etc.
Aggh a good reason to read legal books and contemplate legal training abilities not withstanding but agggh.

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

I read somewhere about fighting the cuts with Law what CANNOT be cut because it is 'cemented to the floor'.
http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/
http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/news/using-the-lacuts-updated/00051.html
Using the Law to fight cuts.

Richie-from-the-Boro

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver wrote: »

What a bloody shame Kenneth Clarke is defunding Advice centres he's a bloody lawyer.

Amendments were tabled. The Right Honourable Kenneth Clarke did promise to look seriously at legal aid funding in the lower tribunals during the regulatory stages of the legal aid reforms. The government voted out the amendments on the grounds of 'financial privilege'.

Later Clarke backtracked by stating """Mr Clarke: I have obviously failed to make myself completely clear, so I will try again. As it stands, the Government’s amendment in lieu applies only to upper tribunal"""

Prior to 2010 legal aid funded the poor, disabled and disadvantaged via contracts with the CAB, law centres and solicitors, some 130,000 benefit claimants a year were given an 'assist' with their disputes in particular with the DWP and ESA / WCA issues. Since the conDEMS took over in 2010, the comprehensive spending review of 2010 announced how £350 million a year had to be saved from the yearly £2.1 billion legal aid bill, many of the contracts awarded to the CAB and others have been withdrawn, hence their 'bankruptcy' and demise.

Up until the Coalition government took over in 2010 legal aid had funded CAB, law centres and solicitors to assist around 130,000 benefit claimants a year with their cases; many of them involving disputes against the controversial Employment & Support Allowance and the findings of the 'Work Capability Assessment'. The most recent appeal statistics show that we are on track to reach nearly half a million benefit appeals a year in tribunal rooms; the number of appeals has risen so dramatically that cases are now having to be dealt with in the much more formal & frightening setting of a County or Magistrates' Court.

One money-laundering case during 2009-2010 cost the taxpayer £15.7m, while a terrorism trial the following year cost £14.7m. The ministry said it had spent £444,220.21 to date to defend Steven Wright, who was jailed in February 2008 for the murder of five prostitutes in Ipswich. More than £1m had also been paid by the Legal Services Commission, which is responsible for the legal aid budget, in relation to the trial of the disgraced Turkish-Cypriot businessman Asil Nadir, the MoJ said.

Nadir was given £1m legal aid, but then he did make a political donation to the Conservative [Margaret Thatcher and Sir John Major] Party of £440,000. Accountants Touche Ross concluded that £365,000 of the £440,000 donated to the Tories came from money defrauded from Polly Peck, but the Tories still would not morally or physically pay it back.

If not for legal aid, and the CAB's of this world how else are the poor disabled and disadvantaged going to be within financial reach of justice ?

satarical

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver wrote: »

What a bloody shame Kenneth Clarke is defunding Advice centres he's a bloody lawyer.

The answer is quite simple.

"The taxpayers of this country find it incredible to believe that money that they are paying out of their wages is being used to fund legal advice and representation so that people can claim more money in the form of benefits out of this country..........".

A comment that was made by our local mayor when the council were asked to put more money into the local advice centres.

speedfreek1000

It's not just CABs and local advice centers

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/care/shelter-forced-to-close-advice-offices/6525582.article

Homelessness charity Shelter is being forced to press ahead with closing 10 of its housing advice offices in England because of legal aid cuts.


The organisation expects this could mean up to 100 redundancies but said it was ‘doing everything we can to keep the numbers as low as possible’.

Government cuts to legal aid will mean a 50 per cent reduction in funding for the charity’s face-to-face advice services.

You have to remember too that the majority of the "major "charities"" are central funded by Government as well.

DIAL MIND etc all will be going the same way.

The reliance on and threat of removal of Government funding is one of the theories of why there has been only been token indiference to what is happening.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

My local welfare rights worker who's supported me through 2 ESA/DLA applications and appeals last year had to leave the local independent advice center and take a position within an other boroughs' Council welfare Rights team.

Basically except for these council run teams all funding through out London ends in April. That's London so heaven help those in the rest of the country (which nobody cares about) and were a wasteland/lottery for services anyway.

The cuts to council funded service (if you're lucky they exist at all in your area atm) is all ready in full swing and the bar to be able to access them started climbing so that it's near on impossible.

2 years ago the fact I was on MRC DLA would have opened up a whole raft of useful council services now even if you have a HRC/HRM you'll have a hell of a time meeting the "protecting the most vulnerable in society" criteria.