Tag Archive for 'Shelter'

Falling property and other news

Published
by
NL
on 20 April 2008
in Legal Aid
. 0 Comments

Labyrinth and MinotaurThis week’s award for literalism goes to William Lyttle. Mr Lyttle, apparently not realising that ‘fall’ and ‘collapse’ are usually metaphors when applied to property, spent 40 years excavating a labyrinth of tunnels under his Hackney property. Mr Lyttle, the Daedalus of east London, was this week ordered to pay Hackney Council £300,000 for the cost of making the property safe, after they evicted him in 2006. Mr Lyttle’s excavations had previously caused a 15 foot abyss to appear in the pavement outside the house. Mr Lyttle remains subject to an injunction to keep him from his subterranean labours.

The Shelter strike is back on, sadly. Shelter staff are due to strike on Thursday 24 April and Friday 25 April. Details here (hat-tip to Housed for the link). A Shelter staffer has left a comment on this blog about developments.

In linked news, concerning as it does LSC funding for not-for-profits, the Mary Ward pro-bono unit is facing closure. The pro-bono unit was supported by the main LSC-funded law centre, but the effect of the fixed fee scheme has been to slash the funding of the Law Centre, so there is no spare cash. Tellingly,

the director told volunteers that because the legal aid caseworkers are working with reduced funds, the centre is having to prioritise simple, short matters and turn away people with complex legal problems.

This is exactly what everyone warned would happen with the funding changes. Sadly, this won’t be the last story of this kind.

Hierarchy of Need

Published
by
NL
on 16 March 2008
in Legal Aid and job
. 4 Comments

I haven’t posted about the Shelter staff dispute until now, partly because I was hoping it would be resolved and partly because I had little to add.

I have been prodded into posting by a comment by Mark P. As he observes, Shelter management are in the vanguard of the NfP sector in ‘ensuring competitiveness’ in the chase for future competitive bidding for LSC franchises. Shelter’s management rather disingenuously argue that as the frontline services are the major recipient of state funding, it is frontline services that should bear the brunt of the ‘efficiencies’ (link goes to a .doc, courtesy of Nik Nicol).

What Shelter are doing today will inevitably be a model or rationale for the NfP sector (and quite possibly private firms as well). It is therefore of much broader significance than ‘just’ Shelter, if that wasn’t enough.

After 2 days of strikes (4 and 10 March), things have clearly got nasty, with tales of high pressure individual interviews pushing the new contracts under threat of dismissal.

But there is still amusement to be had. Witness Adam Sampson, Shelter CEO, claiming support, via a link, to be found in a post by Bridget Fox, Lib Dem candidate for Islington South. Then note that Fox’s post doesn’t offer support for Shelter management, it just opposes Ken Loach’s call to stop donations. Next, observe Fox backing frantically away from having to say anything contentious in the comments to the post as she is confronted by a couple of Shelter staffers explaining the dispute and highlighting heavy-handed treatment by management.

It appears that this was the most supportive link that Mr Sampson could find.