Many Londoners left without access to advice as the social welfare advice sector reaches crisis point
The provision of social welfare advice across London is insufficient to meet the needs of Londoners. Shortages are particularly prevalent in services for young people and ethnic minority communities whose advice needs have increased during the lockdown.
Research by the Advice Services Alliance found that even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit increasing numbers of people in London are seeking advice for welfare benefits, debt, immigration and employment issues. Services are struggling to meet the demand. Drivers of increased demand for advice include changes to disability benefits, the roll out of Universal Credit, the no recourse to public funds immigration policy, a shift to online processes for claiming benefits and Brexit. The situation is worse this year due to the impact of coronavirus.
The provision of advice in London was found to fall short of the high level of demand with 75% of survey respondents informing of gaps or shortages in social welfare advice in their area. Young people and ethnic minority communities are least likely to easily access advice services although they are more likely to need them. People living in deprived areas of outer London boroughs were found to have greater need for advice yet less accessible services than those in inner London.
Whilst facing a backlog of clients, advice organisations are having to cope with depleting funding and resources as well as switching services to remote delivery in response to Covid-19. One in seven advice services reported being told to expect future funding cuts from local authorities and 50% said they didn’t know what the future held.
Despite the many challenges the advice sector finds innovative ways to deliver advice to those who need it most, such as providing services in health settings, training community ‘intermediaries’ who encounter people with social welfare issues and harnessing pro bono legal support. However, this is not enough to plug the gaps left by funding cuts.
The research calls for the Greater London Authority to establish a social welfare advice hub for strategic action and for central government to implement the recommendation from the Low Commission (2013) to provide a National Advice and Legal Support Fund of £50 million per year for England and Wales.
ASA Director Lindsey Poole said:
“This is a pivotal moment for policy makers and funders across London to understand the needs of their communities and to place the eco-system of organisations in the advice sector at the heart of the recovery from Covid-19 and lockdown. There is a desperate need for the government to support the advice sector as it provides a lifeline to people facing crisis and alleviates strain on public services. Demand for advice could be reduced if government departments took measures to resolve their systemic failures and reverse welfare cuts. The opportunities to open up new relationships and new ways of working are very real and we very much hope that the findings of this report will help rebuild and reshape access to advice for all Londoners”
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Notes to editor:
- For further information please contact: Lindsey Poole, Director@asauk.org.uk or call: 07904 377460
- The Advice Services Alliance is the membership umbrella group for voluntary social welfare legal advice services across the UK. The advice sector comprises not-for-profit organisations that help people to exercise their rights, manage debt, claim benefits, access housing, and to tackle eviction, discrimination and domestic violence. Please see www.asauk.org.uk
- This report ‘Advising Londoners: an evaluation of the provision of social welfare legal advice across London’ was commissioned by the Greater London Authority, Communities and Social Policy Unit in April 2019. To see the full report please go to the Advice Services Alliance’s website: https://asauk.org.uk/projects/
- The Low Commission, chaired by Lord Low of Dalston was set up in 2013 by the Legal Action Group and the report ‘Tackling the advice deficit. A strategy for access to advice and legal support on social welfare law in England and Wales’ was published in January 2014. See https://www.lag.org.uk/about-us/policy/the-low-commission-200551