Hammersmith and Fulham Conservatives start on the heart of the voluntary sector

Introduction:

Hammersmith and Fulham's Conservative council is planning to cut funding to a mighty range of longstanding local voluntary groups. That’s no big surprise from a Conservative council, although it was certainly delivered as one. Some groups have only just heard that they’re about to lose their funding, and mostly, they’ve heard it from each other. The council has not been too quick to let these applicants know that their money has gone.

The worst hit by far is the Hammersmith Law Centre – a longstanding charitable organisation that has been providing Hammersmith’s community and voluntary sectors with advantageous legal advice since 1979, and tormenting various council kaisers for about as long. The Law Centre is staffed by 12 lawyers - 12 experienced persons who know the law, continue to set national legal precedents with their work, give free legal advice to charities, unions, right-minded council officers and anybody else who suspects that the council or government office that they’re having to deal with is talking neocon garbage. It is perhaps needless to say that the Law Centre poses a problem for the council.

And so it is that the Law Centre is due to lose 60% of its funding. The Tories will try to point out (as their officer report on voluntary sector funding to the council’s Cabinet on Monday 16 April does, all over the place) that they are not cutting funding to the voluntary sector as such – they are merely redistributing it. Alas for council leader Stephen Greenhalgh, it is hard to mask this sort of surgery. The truth is that if you get rid of the Hammersmith Law Centre, you lobotomise the community and voluntary sector in Hammersmith and Fulham. You don’t need a lot of brain to get it around that one.

We will be looking at this issue in more depth over the coming weeks and talking to more of the people who are affected. This first story begins the discussion.

Note: voluntary groups affected by the proposed funding cuts will hold a protest at a Hammersmith and Fulham council cabinet meeting on Monday 16 April at 7pm in the Assembly Hall in the Town Hall on Kings Street in Hammersmith. This is a public meeting, and the affected voluntary groups would welcome support.

Hammersmith Law Centre

The Hammersmith Law Centre discovered that it was about to lose 60% of its funding not long before Easter. Staff there appear to have found out about on the day that long-time centre lawyer Tony Pullen just happened to see the council report that recommended the cut.

The centre is on the mailing list for Hammersmith and Fulham council agendas, and the agenda for the April 16 2007 cabinet meeting had come through the door, as the council agendas usually do. Pullen decided to thumb through the agenda - mostly, it seems, for the hell of it. He noticed that there was a report in the agenda called 'Voluntary Sector Funding, 2007 to 2009.' 'I thought 'that looks interesting,' Pullen says, raising his eyebrows.

Indeed it was. The report, which is still due to go before the Monday 16 April Cabinet meeting, recommended a £159,000 cut to the Centre's annual £261,000 grant – the most substantial in a list of very substantial hits. Pullen found himself a little flustered. 'We hadn't had any warning, and we hadn't heard anything from the council. This report was saying that we were going to lose 60% of our funding, and the cabinet meeting (where a vote would be taken on that recommendation) was only a few days away when I saw that report. I don't know how we would have found out if I hadn't seen that report.'

It seems possible that they would have found out when the cheques started to bounce, which was likely to start happening soon. The report to Cabinet recommended that the local voluntary groups that were due to lose some, or all, of their funding under the proposed new funding regime (and there is quite a list of them) be given six months to organise 'strategies' and 'contingencies' - where the performance of those groups was deemed 'satisfactory,' that is. By October 1 2007, that will be that for those who are due to be cut loose.

The news came almost too late for those on the rough end to make a formal protest: the deadline to organise a formal deputation to speak at the Cabinet meeting was Monday 9 April. This meant that the Law Centre had very little time to try and find the ten local registered voters they needed to make up a formal deputation. They had to try and find them over the Easter break, too. Pullen says it seems likely that the smaller voluntary groups that didn't know about the funding cuts, or about the deadline for organising a deputation to speak against the cuts at the coming cabinet meeting, have missed their opportunity to bring a deputation on Monday.

At is it, some groups have had their requests to bring a deputation refused, on the grounds that their (necessarily rushed) written requests didn't meet the council's formal deputations criteria. 'It has been a very bad time for people in these (voluntary) groups,' Pullen says. 'It's hard to accept that this is the way that the Council is handling these voluntary groups. These groups have been working in their communities for a long time.

It certainly is hard to accept says Helena Ismail. Ismail is the co-ordinator of longstanding Somali and immigrant support group Horn of Africa. One of the things she is finding especially hard to accept is that after serving her community for 15 years, she'll be out of a job in six months' time. She won't even have a chance to speak at the cabinet meeting about it.

Her group is due to lose all funding if the cabinet accepts the report's recommendations on Monday. Her group is also among those that had its application to bring a deputation turned down (she says the council ruled her application out on the grounds that two of the signatories to the deputation weren't borough residents. Ismail says that she found the process complex and confusing, and that she wants the council to waive the requirement so that she and her clients can at least have a say before the cabinet closes them down).

Horn of Africa got about £55,000 to run their organisation last year. For the 2007 to 2008 year, it will get nothing. That means that Horn of Africa, which has been providing immigrants with welfare, benefits and housing support and advice for about 20 years, will have to shut in six months' time.

Ismail says that she should be allowed to at least mention her concerns about it all to the cabinet on Monday.

'The work we do is helping immigrants integrate into society. They are people who have little English. They come from other countries, from war-torn countries, and they're suffering and they find it very hard to work around the benefits and housing systems. Those systems are incredibly complicated, especially if you have got no idea of who to call, or how to get started. We can tell them what to do and who to talk to and we give them that support while they're going through the systems.'

Horn of Africa's work is not just about getting people onto welfare, either, says Ismail. It's about getting them off welfare when they've settled into the UK, and helping them make their own way. Which they do. Contrary to popular belief, Ismail says, immigrants don’t come to this country to do stuff-all and kick back on a benefit. They come here to start new lives. 'A lot of the people we've helped in the borough now have jobs. They're taxpayers and they're homeowners.'

Ismail says that the reality is that once Horn of Africa is gone, the people who use her group will not find the same sort of support elsewhere.

'I suppose they will be told to go to the Shepherd's Bush Advice Centre, or to Citizens' Advice.’ (Citizens' Advice is due for a substantial funding boost if the Voluntary Sector Funding report recommendations are accepted by the cabinet on Monday. Not all voluntary groups are facing funding cuts: it's local groups that provide comprehensive support to deprived communities that are being hit particularly hard).

The problem, Ismail says, is that the Shepherd's Bush Advice Centre doesn't have the capacity. This seems fair comment. It seems unlikely that SBAC, which provides welfare and benefits advice, will be hanging out for the extra work. It doesn't have extensive opening hours and has had to fight council proposals for staff and funding cuts itself in recent times.

The CAB, Pullen says, is excellent, but acts largely in an advisor capacity. It explains the law and people's entitlements, but doesn't offer the same sort of ongoing representation service that organisations like the Law Centre do. Centre lawyers not only advise their clients - they take on cases and represent people at court, tribunal and appeal. They take the fight to all levels, which is why they wind people up at all levels.

Ismail is pretty convinced that the problem is her clients aren't politically useful to a Conservative administration. 'They're immigrants. They're Somalis,' she says. 'They don't count. They're not the sort of people who are going to vote for the Conservatives. But they live in terrible situations. I had one woman in who was living in temporary accommodation, in a bed and breakfast. She was sick and her child was sick, because of the conditions they were living in. She kept bringing her child in and saying Look, look look. There were scabs all over the child's body. It took me weeks to get them out of that place.'

The Law Centre, meanwhile, spends most of its time acting for people who can't get - or afford – legal help or a hearing elsewhere. There are 12 lawyers and barristers at the centre. They cover a fair bit of ground – they advise and represent people who have housing problems, or problems at work, or problems with the Home Office, or problems with any of the numberless bottom-feeders who can make everyday life so challenging if they feel like it, which they so often seem to. The centre gives legal advice to other agencies, including the Council. It takes referrals from the council. It appears to have taken on every bent landlord in Hammersmith and Fulham at one point or another: the centre has won damages for tenants who've fought for adequate disabled access to their own houses, and dealt with housing rent arrears and possession cases, and turned up quite a few bungling officials on the way.

The centre will also advise against the council when the council is wrong: this may be part of the problem that the Conservatives have with them. The centre is also full of socialists who know the law, which is probably another problem that the Conservatives have with them.

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Join the start of the campaign with the protest at the Hammersmith and Fulham Council Cabinet meeting

7pm
Monday 16 April 2007
Assembly Hall
Hammersmith Town Hall
Kings Street
Hammersmith