Covid-19 Specialist Advice Service Scheme: End of Grant Report
A new report from the Ministry of Justice demonstrates how government funding has maintained and expanded vital access to free specialist legal advice.
Applies to England and Wales
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Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, MOJ and DCMS provided £5.4 million to not-for-profit providers of specialist legal advice, through the COVID-19 Specialist Advice Services Scheme (CSASS) grant.
The funding comprised of £2.8 million from HMT, via DCMS, and £2.6 million from MOJ’s budget. We awarded £3 million to law centres, via the Law Centres Network (LCN), and £2.4 million to specialist legal advice organisations through the Community Justice Fund (CJF), The CJF is a joint initiative between leading social justice organisations including Advice UK, Law Centres Network, Citizens Advice, the AB Charitable Trust, Indigo Trust, and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
The CJF is administered by the Access to Justice Foundation (ATJF) and it is designed to provide support to not-for-profit specialist legal advice organisations.
The CSASS grant has helped organisations prevent closure and remain operational to provide specialist legal advice services following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The grant also helped organisations to procure equipment to enable, and adapt to, remote service delivery; and to increase capacity to meet the demand for legal advice services.
As part of the grant conditions, recipient organisations were asked to provide financial and monitoring data from which this end-of-grant report was developed.