Written evidence submitted by the Advice Services Alliance (ASA)

Response to the DCMS Select Committee inquiry

Impact of Covid-19 on DCMS sectors

17 June 2020

Covid-19: many free advice organisations are facing imminent collapse

Introduction

The Advice Services Alliance (ASA) is the umbrella body for independent advice services in the UK. Our members are national networks of not-for-profit organisations providing advice and help on the law, domestic violence, debt, housing, immigration and related issues.

ASA promotes the development of high-quality advice services and co-operation between advice organisations. We provide a forum for members and undertake policy work on their behalf, including responding to government initiatives relating to advice.

Large swathes of the advice sector are facing collapse, just at the point the public, and the Government most need its services and support

An estimated nine million people have been furloughed[1]. 950,000 previously financially independent people are turning to benefits[2]. Thousands of households with little or no savings[3] cannot meet rent or mortgage payments or repay loans.

Many advice sector organisations are struggling to keep services going, whilst coping with unprecedented levels of demand at this extraordinary time. In so many cases this sector carries out the work that the Government and taxpayers would need to fund, it has done this for many years. It includes such names as National Citizens Advice, Shelter and Age UK as well as many smaller organisations dealing with anything from domestic violence to debt.

We are already seeing the horrendous impact that lockdown is having on domestic abuse, this will get worse as advice agencies struggle. Other needs for advice on debt, amongst other issues, will soon begin to reach unmanageable levels too.

There is a lack of remote-working facilities in the sector, many agencies cannot afford them and many clients are unable to access online services in any case so can no longer be helped, and the number of advisers is rapidly falling through isolation. The advice sector needs cash injection now in order to find ways of helping help those most in need; enabling everybody to access advice who needs it must be a key part of the Government’s strategy for the country’s recovery.

In particular, generalist advice centres which give basic benefits advice and often work with marginalised client groups are losing out. This extends down to small community organisations which are often the interface between ‘specialist centres’ and clients. The ASA has been trying to make the case for the ecosystem that for people who come in through small community organisation routes to be referred on to more specialist services. Like any fragile ecosystem that’s damaged, it can’t be restored by only repairing one bit. Local authorities understand this; many have employed ‘community navigators’ who help people access voluntary sector provision.

The health and well-being- potential must also be considered; funding from public health should be used to help in order to avoid mental and physical health issues for people left devastated by financial, legal and domestic violence.

The Advice Services Alliance has been asking for urgent talks with the Government on how the sector can best meet the forthcoming blizzard of public enquiries. We can’t predict the virus, but we know what advice needs will be: we have urged the Government to act now.

The sector can only help if it survives; for that to happen funding is needed

Advice services are crucial to returning to a post-pandemic life and essential to prevent the courts and tribunals, local authority homelessness services and front-line health and social-care services becoming overwhelmed by the surge of demand.

People seek advice when a problem escalates

How people respond to problems follows a well-known pattern: many do not recognise they have a problem at the early stages and when they do understand this few seek help until they have already tried and failed to help themselves. This pattern is true across all ages, social classes and types of problem. This is the point when people turn to advice services for help: the point at which the problem is both more challenging to resolve and more urgent.

The pandemic has created a whole new group of people who will need advice. We need to be ready to help these people so they can manage their own issues. With limited advice sector capacity, those who are the most capable will find the help they need; those with the least capacity will be overlooked in the deluge of clients.

Funding

Whilst there is currently no statutory basis for the provision of advice centres, local authority funding still provides the backbone of support for advice services, with other funding from central Government, trusts and foundations, The National Lottery Community Fund and the Legal Aid Agency. Over the past 10 years, advice services have seen successive income reductions, firstly through the loss of Legal Aid for Social Welfare Advice (estimated as £89 million a year in 2014) and later through successive local authority cuts (estimated at £40 million a year lost by 2015 with further cuts experienced year on year since then). [4]

Major foundations who support advice services have set up an emergency appeal[5] and whilst this money will help those who face immediate collapse, this approach cannot fill the gap in advice services funding necessary for the return to normality. The Ministry of Justice has announced emergency funding for ‘specialist legal advice centres’ and the Law Centres which has held in abeyance the immediate funding cliff for those providing legal advice through the legal aid scheme. Whilst greatly welcomed, this is a short term measure and will not address the longer term systemic funding issues.

The Government must respond to the anticipated rise in problems by:

• establishing a National Advice and Legal Support Fund available to all frontline advice services as recommended by the Low Commission and as modelled in Wales (Welsh National Single Advice Fund), funded in the region of £100 million
• contributing to the fund from across Government Departments, in particular from those which benefit from advice-sector intervention: Ministry of Justice; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government; Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy; HM Treasury; Department of Employment and Learning; Department for Work and Pensions, The Home Office and the Department of Health
• providing grant funding to infrastructure bodies who support frontline advice services with access to high-quality legal advice and guidance materials, training, supervision and quality assurance processes
• establishing ‘help desks’ in all courts and/or tribunals dealing with issues such as family law, housing, benefits and other civil matters with a ‘hot’ referral system into the advice sector
• establishing a national programme similar to the ‘Community Programme’ from the 1980s or the ‘Future Work Programme’ set up after the Financial Crisis, providing young people (unemployed by virtue of the virus at a vital point in the career path) with the opportunity to train as an advice worker and to be deployed in advice services across the country
• including in all policy making processes consideration of the impact of Government policies on the need for advice services and ensuring that adequate provision is made to provide for such services where required.

How the pandemic will be remembered

Access to social justice is a key component of a fair and equal society, and a true test of this principle is whether the most vulnerable people can equally engage in exercising their rights to resolve their problems. Covid-19 has exposed and created vulnerabilities across society with such speed and ferocity that is without precedent. The health impacts of the virus in the long term are unknown, but we can predict the societal impacts of the shutdown; with this knowledge comes the route back to the post pandemic normality.