MoJ and City firms in cash boost for law centres

29 January 2010

The Ministry of Justice and a group of City law firms have pledged over £300,000 for a project to help improve the administration of law centres.

In an unprecedented move, the MoJ has committed £235,000 while £80,000 has come from a large group of City firms, including Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance, and from the Access to Justice Foundation.

Julie Bishop, director of the Law Centres Federation, said the project at the South West London Law Centre aimed to create a business model which could be applied elsewhere.

Bishop said a study by the MoJ into local legal advice had shown that agencies dealing with more complex clients needed more help and investment in infrastructure.

“Carter recommended that a sum of £4m was invested in infrastructure, but it never happened,” said Bishop.

“This is not a grant to an individual law centre, it’s a grant to a project. As this develops, it will be made available to other law centres.”

Launching the project last week, Lord Bach, the legal aid minister, said the government was committed to ensuring that as many people as possible had access to social welfare advice, “particularly at a time when many organisations are feeling the pressure and do need some extra support”.

A spokeswoman for the MoJ added that the project would help law centres attract more funding at a time when they were competing against CABx and other agencies.

South West London Law Centre is the biggest in the country, with branches in Battersea, Wandsworth, Merton, Croydon, Sutton, Richmond and Kingston.