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SOLICITORS have warned that a centre offering free legal advice to people in desperate need could be forced to close unless City Hall throws it a lifeline.

The Paddington Law Centre, a not-for-profit organisation in Harrow Road, has five full-time solicitors who offer help on issues of housing, debt and benefits.

The centre, which has been going since 1973, recently lost a grant from lobbying group London Councils, and opposition councillors have called on City Hall to allocate it £50,000 from the Social and Community Fund – a pot of money set aside for good causes.

Solicitor Anne McNicholas said: “This money would save us. At the moment we are doing all we can to raise emergency funds to buy us some time.”

Ms McNicholas said the centre was unique as it represented people at welfare benefits tribunals, a service provided by no other organisation in the area.

One of its notable recent successes involved preventing the eviction of a single mother and her young son after she ran into financial trouble.

Queen’s Park councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, leader of the Westminster Labour group, has written to Westminster Council’s chief executive Mike More suggesting that money from the Social and Community Fund – which includes cash from Section 106 contributions from major development projects and is intended to benefit deserving community groups – could be used to bail out the centre.

Last month, it emerged the council had allocated £110,000 from the fund towards repairing railings in front of hotels in Sussex Gardens, Paddington.

Robert Davis, deputy leader and cabinet member for the builtenvironment, said: “We know that there are a huge number of deserving projects and organisations that could benefit from this fund. 

“We are currently looking at the next round of allocations and the best way to distribute the funding.”

Pictured: From left: Law Centre staff Anne McNicholas, Floyd Harty, Roderick Colquhoun, Saturina Michel, Leroy Pitter and Vanessa Logan

PUBLISHED: 08 July 2011
by JOSH LOEB