Recommendation 14

HM Government Not Addressed

We agree with the Committee that Law Centres and other not-for profit providers play a vital role in helping people in communities across England and Wales access justice and resolve their legal problems. Over the past few months, the importance of these services has been brought into sharp focus and many providers have gone above and beyond to ensure vulnerable people across society can continue to get the help they need. That is why, as a priority, the Government secured £5.4m in emergency grant funding to not-for-profit providers to ensure the people in the communities they serve can continue to access the help they need. We are also continuing to work with our delivery partners - the Access to Justice Foundation and the Law Centres Network - and practitioners from across the not-for-profit advice sector to ensure people across England and Wales are effectively supported to access justice, as part of our wider work on legal support. More broadly, we also continue to move forward with our £3.1m Legal Support for Litigants in Person (LSLIP) programme, a two-year grant funding pot also being delivered in partnership with the Access to Justice Foundation. The new programme is designed to provide services at local, regional and national levels with the aim of understanding more about how they can combine to help vulnerable litigants in person. To date, more than £500,000 of grants have been awarded to a number of charities to provide the new national-level services: Ȥ Support Through Court (STC) and RCJ Advice – who are piloting a new remote support initiative, as well as adding new referral routes to STC’s existing telephone helpline. Ȥ LawWorks – who will scale up their Free Legal Answers (FLA) website, which enables people on low incomes and not eligible for legal aid to access free, initial legal advice provided by registered pro bono solicitors. Ȥ Law for Life – who will add new resources to their Advicenow website to assist people to deal with a range of legal problems, as well as creating new guidance to help individuals appear in virtual courts effectively. A further £2 million of funding from the programme will be awarded to smaller not-for-profit organisations at regional and local levels this autumn. Distribution of this funding was moved back in order to give those organisations more time to manage the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and put together their proposals.