July 2017

Response to Grenfell Tower

Grant: £66,788
July 28, 2017

North Kensington Law Centre is situated at the base of Grenfell Tower. The devastating fire in June 2017 caused an unprecedented need for legal education and legal services amongst the local community. The Law Centre worked with the local Citizens Advice Bureau and two other local advice charities to identify the gaps in services and funding for meeting legal advice needs in the immediate aftermath.

This funding allows the Law Centre to create a 'Grenfell' team; boosting, particularly, their capacity for immigration and housing casework, for public law, for coordination of expert pro bono volunteers and for strategic litigation.

Falmouth 'Skype' Specialist Legal Advice Project

Grant: £71,000
July 28, 2017

The Project is to establish a ‘Skype’ advice clinic at the Dracaena Centre, and also to provide remote support to Cornwall CAB also largely using Skype. Staff solicitors at the Legal Advice Centre will provide free legal advice remotely to persons in need in Falmouth using a bank of Skype enabled computers at the Dracaena Centre. The clinics will run weekly on Monday and Fridays. The advice provided will be on Welfare Benefits and debt. Follow-up work will be undertaken by LAC lawyers.

Legal Advice Centre will provide the following to Cornwall CAB:

• take all their disability benefit appeals to the First-tier tribunal;
• work with the CAB so that their efforts at Mandatory Reconsideration are more effective;
• provide the CAB and staff/volunteers from the Dracaena Centre with training on Universal Credit;
• provide the CAB with an employment consultancy service.

Supreme Court Arts Trust educational work

Grant: £10,000
July 10, 2017

Great Repeal Bill Co-ordination

Grant: £10,000
July 6, 2017

Make Our Rights Reality - Year 2

Grant: £193,413
July 5, 2017

MORR is a pioneering major national programme designed to inspire disadvantaged young people’s participation in public legal education and PLE-related social action activities to increase their own and others’ legal capability.

MORR will foster opportunities for young people (aged 15-24) to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to engage in civic society as informed and responsible citizens; supporting them to become forces for change by giving them a voice to shape a society in which the law is seen by them and others as a tool for tackling everyday problems. MORR’s vision includes a cultural shift so that public services and the wider community see the value of young people understanding their legal rights.

Working in partnership with a network of carefully selected front-line legal and youth agencies across England, Youth Access will lead the development and implementation of this unique and innovative national project. MORR will harness an unrivalled breadth of expertise from across the youth and legal sectors coupled with reach to young people across a wide number of communities.

Informing, equipping and coordinating civil society during the Brexit process

Grant: £150,000
July 5, 2017

Brexit will likely separate the UK from the underlying EU frameworks for established human rights and equality protections emanating from the UK’s membership of the EU. This raises particular questions in a Northern Ireland context where the peace settlement was underpinned by membership of the EU and the safeguards it provided.

Working though the Northern Ireland Human Rights Fund (NIHRF), with a particular focus on the work of the Human Rights Consortium (HRC), the project will focus on researching and highlighting existing EU human rights and equality protections that will be at risk of removal and the impact of such removal in NI.

The project will inform and seek to coordinate civil society organisations across all sectors to ensure greater civil society participation in the Brexit process and discussions from NI with GB, the ROI, and EU. The project will also support the work of other NIHRF grantees working together to address the Brexit challenges. This will include supporting the Committee for the Administration of Justice’s (CAJ) work with academic colleagues to understand the constitutional implications of Brexit and possible mitigation measures, and supporting the Public Interest Litigation Support Project’s (PILS) work providing legal analysis on specific issues identified by civil society members once Brexit negotiations have begun.

Capacity building with civil society organisations in Scotland on Brexit and its implications

Grant: £104,504
July 5, 2017

This project will equip civil society organisations in Scotland with the requisite legal knowledge to actively engage with the political and legal process of the UK exiting the EU.

This joint venture between Human Rights Consortium Scotland (HRCS; a network of Scottish civil society organisations) and Scottish Universities Legal Network for Europe (SULNE) will deliver a programme of events, trainings, briefings, and information alerts tailored to the needs of civil society organisations in Scotland.

By bringing together the civil society contacts, networking, capacity building and collaborative approach of HRCS, with the legal and educational expertise of SULNE and its capacity for knowledge generation, this project will empower the Scottish third sector to engage with the process of the “Great Repeal Bill” at Westminster and in Scotland and the wider Brexit discussions. The advice generated will be politically neutral and unbiased.

The project will:

• identify legal educational needs with regard to Brexit;
• raise awareness of key legal issues without which civil society organisations would find it difficult to have their voice heard in this process;
• provide training;
• produce accessible information; and
• provide expert support for civil society organisations wishing to engage in the Brexit process.

Law Centres 2020 Digital Vision - Phase 2

Grant: £170,000
July 5, 2017

This project is transforming the digital infrastructure of Law Centres nationally.

Phase 1 established a minimum standard for digital equipment and systems across the network.

Phase 2 provides:

• phased rollout of desktop computers to Law Centres,
• move from office systems to cloud based services such as Office 365,
• migration of data to secure cloud based storage,
• upgrading broadband where required,
• establishing national IT support,
• developing a national Law Centre data set and standardized set of forms,
• distributing digital tools being developed for Law Centre specific use as they become available, such as, tools to assist with client reception, client feedback and document generation.

9 Law Centres with 190 users are participating in Phase 1. In Phase 2, the upgrade will be rolled out to a further 15 Centres with 300 users.