Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre

...you terrible Tories.

A decision on the legality of the Hammersmith and Fulham Tory council's decision to cut funding to the voluntary sector is due on Monday.

More soon.

Wondering
What will happen.

With most people back from holiday now, we're carrying on with the story about the Hammersmith and Fulham Tory Council's cutting of more than half of the Hammersmith and Fulham Community Law Centre's annual grant. The thousands of people in the borough who can't afford to pay for legal advice and representation will be most affected.

This site has been talking to Law Centre clients this year about the reasons why they sought legal advice and representation from the centre.

Sophia El-Kaddah, a 22-year-old who is severely disabled with cerebral palsy, is one of those people. The Law Centre is helping her take a case against the Acton Housing Association, which refused for a year to carry out promised accessibility modifications to Sophia's Acton Town flat.

Sophia is confined to a wheelchair, is unable to move on her own, and needs 24-hour care. She was studying for a national diploma in health and social care, but left, because her disability and health problems made the attendance requirements difficult for her.

This is the latest article in a series about Hammersmith and Fulham Council's cutting of funding to voluntary sector organisations, and its targeting in particular of the Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre, which is about to lose 60% of its funding.

There are links to the earlier articles in this series at the end of this story. There are also links to the Conservative blogs that have been discussing this issue and these posts.

Community law centres aren't always popular with the national and local politicians that fund them, but surely that's par for the course?

Law centres were set up to provide free legal advice to people who can't afford to pay for legal help and representation. Often, these people are users of public services like immigration services, council housing, and welfare. And there are, unfortunately, times when these people are not given the right advice about their immigration, housing and welfare entitlements.

The truth is that government agencies and councils are as capable of cocking up as the rest of us, and on an awesome scale when they really give it a go. They wrongly deny people their entitlements to housing benefits, or at work, or they don't act on complaints with quite the vigour you'd hope.

And who can blame them for these shambles? Times ain't exactly high in the public-sector trenches. Frontline staff - people who know as much as anyone about the ways that complex benefits systems work and combine - are being culled at a majestic rate. God only knows what is happening at the Home Office. Councils are a riot

Having a discussion with Hammersmith and Fulham Tory councillor Paul Bristow over at his blog at the moment. We're talking about the proposed voluntary funding cuts at that council and the effect this will have on the Hammersmith Law Centre in particular. (Naughty Paul actually pinched a photo taken by one of the contributors to this site and put it on his site - see right. That was kind of how we all met each other. Ten points for taste, though - they are pretty good photos).

Anyway - trying to get Paul and council leader Stephen Greenhalgh to agree to an interview on the voluntary funding at Hammersmith and Fulham topic.

This story: the Cabinet at Hammersmith and Fulham's Conservative Council meets to accept the Voluntary Sector Funding report which cuts funding to central and longstanding voluntary groups.

Photo: Hammersmith and Fulham Council leader Stephen Greenhalgh.

Introduction and background to the voluntary sector funding controversy at Hammersmith and Fulham

Photos from the protest at the Monday 16 April Cabinet meeting

Splendid scenes at Hammersmith and Fulham Town Hall this week, when several hundred furious locals shouted the council's largely pale and male Tory cabinet members out of the meeting hall, and down towards the Town Hall latrines - the very place (I'm sure I've got this straight) where the H&F Tories first spawned.

The locals had turned up to protest about the council's plans to cut ('prioritise' is the word that the Tories are using at the moment) funding to Hammersmith and Fulham's voluntary sector.

Groups that work very closely with some of Hammersmith and Fulham's poorest communities have lost all their funding, and they are not thrilled. The Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre - a group of 12 experienced and committed lawyers that has been the legal brain of the Hammersmith voluntary sector together for nearly 30 years, and so often successfully highlighted council and government uselessness - has lost 60% of its funding.