The 2014 North West Legal Walk
The North West Legal Support Trust (NWLST) is a charity, formed in 2009, to raise funds for free legal advice services in the North West of England.
The Trust works to enable the provision of free legal advice to members of the public who would otherwise be disadvantaged and also supports other charitable work that promotes access to justice.
As readers will know all too well, most employment, debt and welfare benefit cases have been removed from the legal aid scheme since April 2013, and a substantial part of legal aid funding for family, housing and immigration cases has also be removed. So the need for free legal advice to vulnerable groups grows, whilst resources to meet that need reduces.
The charities supported by the NWLST provide free legal help to people facing such problems. As part of a network of Legal Support Trusts, working with the Access to Justice Foundation, the NWLST supports the provision of specialist legal advice through law centres, Citizen Advice Bureaux, advice agencies and other free legal advice organisations by providing these organisations, on application, with grant funding. The money for grants is reliant upon fundraising events such as the Liverpool Legal Walk.
The NWLST recently made grants to Blackpool CAB, Cumbria Law Centre, Independent Choices (an employment rights charity who support victims of domestic abuse), Liverpool Central CAB, Merseyside Employment Law and Vauxhall Community Law & Information Centre. As these services adapt to the new funding environment, our grants have helped them to train more volunteers, upgrade their case management software so they can deal with more cases each week or pay for salary costs of specialist caseworkers to ensure their services can continue to meet the desperate need in our communities.
Show your further support for the principle of access to justice for all, by joining in on the Manchester Legal Walk on the 2nd October, or join in at the Liverpool Legal Walk on 25th September.
For more details go to our website at www.nwlst.org.uk or email us at [email protected] and sign up a team today.