This report, commissioned by the Trust for London and Northern Rock Foundation, examines the impact of public expenditure cuts on services to prevent violence against women and girls. It showed that:
• Thirty-one percent of the funding to the domestic violence and sexual abuse sector from local authorities was cut between 2010/11 to 2011/12, a reduction from £7.8 million to £5.4 million. (Data obtained using Freedom of Information Act requests by the False Economy project, and analysed by the research team.)
• The organisations with smaller budgets from the local authorities had larger percentage budget cuts than those in receipt of larger ones: among those with local authority funding of less than £20,000 the average cut was 70% as compared with 29% for those receiving over £100,000, between 2010/11 and 2011/12. (Data obtained using Freedom of Information Act requests by the False Economy project, and analysed by the research team.)
• 230 women, just under 9% of those seeking refuge, were turned away by Women's Aid on a typical day in 2011 due to lack of space. (Data from surveys conducted annually by Women's Aid of their affiliated organisations, analysed by the research team.)
• The number of Independent Domestic Violence Advisers (IDVA) has been reduced: in 2011 among 8 major IDVA service providers supporting 13,180 clients, 2 faced funding cuts of 100%, 3 cuts of 50%, 3 of 40% and 2 of 25%.(Data from a poll carried out by Coordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse (CAADA).)
• IMKAAN, who run services for women from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups, report the closing of two of their six specialist refuges and cuts to local authority funding for two more. (Data from IMKAAN.)
• RESPECT services working to reform male perpetrators of domestic violence suffered budget cuts so that between 2010 and 2011 78% of services reduced the number of clients they were able to assist. (Data from RESPECT London.)
• Statutory provision, including those police and court services that involve specialised expertise, has also been reduced following funding cuts. This includes cuts in the operating levels of Domestic Abuse Officers, a unit on female genital mutilation and domestic violence courts. (Data from Home Office and Ministry for Justice.)
The data was drawn from around 20 published and previously unpublished sources. To read more:

Download summary report
Download full report

Media Coverage:
The Guardian

This report, commissioned by the Trust for London and Northern Rock Foundation, examines the impact of public expenditure cuts on services to prevent violence against women and girls. It showed that:
• Thirty-one percent of the funding to the domestic violence and sexual abuse sector from local authorities was cut between 2010/11 to 2011/12, a reduction from £7.8 million to £5.4 million. (Data obtained using Freedom of Information Act requests by the False Economy project, and analysed by the research team.)
• The organisations with smaller budgets from the local authorities had larger percentage budget cuts than those in receipt of larger ones: among those with local authority funding of less than £20,000 the average cut was 70% as compared with 29% for those receiving over £100,000, between 2010/11 and 2011/12. (Data obtained using Freedom of Information Act requests by the False Economy project, and analysed by the research team.)
• 230 women, just under 9% of those seeking refuge, were turned away by Women's Aid on a typical day in 2011 due to lack of space. (Data from surveys conducted annually by Women's Aid of their affiliated organisations, analysed by the research team.)
• The number of Independent Domestic Violence Advisers (IDVA) has been reduced: in 2011 among 8 major IDVA service providers supporting 13,180 clients, 2 faced funding cuts of 100%, 3 cuts of 50%, 3 of 40% and 2 of 25%.(Data from a poll carried out by Coordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse (CAADA).)
• IMKAAN, who run services for women from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups, report the closing of two of their six specialist refuges and cuts to local authority funding for two more. (Data from IMKAAN.)
• RESPECT services working to reform male perpetrators of domestic violence suffered budget cuts so that between 2010 and 2011 78% of services reduced the number of clients they were able to assist. (Data from RESPECT London.)
• Statutory provision, including those police and court services that involve specialised expertise, has also been reduced following funding cuts. This includes cuts in the operating levels of Domestic Abuse Officers, a unit on female genital mutilation and domestic violence courts. (Data from Home Office and Ministry for Justice.)
The data was drawn from around 20 published and previously unpublished sources. To read more:

Download summary report
Download full report

Media Coverage:
The Guardian

Launched at a special meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid in January 2012, the report received the following media coverage:

The Guardian
Law Gazette
Law Gazette (APPG report)
Harrow Observer

Media Coverage:
The Times (20 October 2011 - page 15)
The Guardian - Society
The Telegraph
The Guardian Online
Dave Hill's London Blog (The Guardian)
London Tonight (11 minutes in)
BBC London Television (14 minutes in)
BBC London Radio (1 hour in)
Sky News radio
The Huffington Post
Dave Hill's London Blog (The Guardian)
LBC
Sunrise radio
Inside Housing
24Dash
Charity Times

The report publishes the results from an opinion poll survey of 1,603 Londoners, carried out by independent polling company GfK NOP for LAG and Trust for London, to find out Londoner's attitudes towards and experiences of legal advice services.

In addition to overwhelming support for the availability of free services the opinion poll found:

• Although the poorest Londoners are most likely to use advice services, all social classes make use of them to help deal with issues such as welfare benefits, tax credits, employment, housing, immigration and debt. 24% of Londoners had sought advice in the last year and 78% of this number received it.

• 81% of people who used advice services were satisfied with the service they received.

• 65% of people said their situation improved due to the advice they had received.

• Only 17% of those seeking advice had used a telephone helpline. This raises serious questions about the government's proposal to introduce a telephone gateway as the sole route for accessing legal aid services.

• Young people (aged between 16-24) were the most likely to say that they found it easy to access advice services. 62% found it fairly easy which was 18 percentage points higher than the next age group. Amongst young people, the same percentage (54%) used the internet as well as advice centres to access support.

The report also analyses the current state of the not for profit advice sector in the capital and the impact of public sector funding cuts to legal advice. It shows that 77,000 Londoners will lose out on help with civil legal problems and that £9.33 million will be cut from advice services, if the reductions in legal aid proposed by the government go ahead. However, the report shows that this is a false economy as the lack of advice will cost the government £55 million in other expenditure. For example, if a housing case is not resolved there might be the costs of temporary accommodation.

Speaking at the parliamentary launch of London Advice Watch at a special meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid, Lord Phillips, a Liberal Democrat peer, welcomed the report as reminding us of the crucial important of access to justice through free legal advice. He stated the cuts to legal aid are "ill-advised" and he believed the Lords would reject key elements of the plans if the Government does not give way. The bill aims to save £350 million a year by removing legal aid from significant areas of law.

Agreeing with much of Phillips' remarks, Labour's former legal aid minister Lord Bach urged concerned parties to keep up pressure on the Commons to accept any amendments made by the House of Lords. 'The issue is not party political; it's too serious for that - it's about the future of civil law and the future of social welfare law,' he said.

Andy Slaughter MP, shadow Justice Minister, spoke about the impact of cuts in his Hammersmith & Fulham constituency where three advice centres have recently closed, despite a huge need for advice in the borough.

Media coverage:
The Guardian
Law Gazette
Law Gazette (APPG report)
Harrow Observer

Download the Full Report

Download the Full Opinion Poll Data

The launch event at the Museum of Docklands included a panel discussion discussing the findings of a new opinion poll by Ipsos-Mori for British Future's first report - Hopes and Fears: The British Future State of the Nation Report 2012 which featured in the Observer. Panelists included journalist Matthew d'Ancona, James Forsyth (Political Editor of The Spectator) and the Director of British Future Sunder Katwala.

Sunder said in his article in the Observer: "We are launching British Future to explore how we extend confidence in modern Britain to those who do not feel it, to help ensure no difficult issue is kept off limits, and to challenge people to work together - on issues of identity and integration, migration and opportunity - to create workable solutions and a future that people want to share".

The report shows that there is strong agreement that immigration has contributed positively to entrepreneurship, film, music, fashion and design and Britain's cuisine. However, it also reveals economic anxieties. Many respondents believe immigration has had a negative impact on the supply of homes, jobs, schools or hospitals. There is a rejection of segregation, with 51% of people believing the government should encourage parents to put their children in ethnically diverse schools. Black and Asian people feel this most strongly (60%).

About British Future
British Future has four main areas where it wants to open up more public debate - identity and integration, migration and opportunity. In considering these, its starting point is a belief in:

• Building a modern British identity which helps to build an inclusive citizenship, where we can all be confident about who we are, and which recognises the national and local identities we hold in Britain today too.

• Promoting integration in Britain, so that people from all backgrounds contribute fully to the society that we want to share.

• Understanding that migration has long made a positive contribution to British life, so we need to address its economic and social pressure, to manage it fairly for everyone.

• Working for economic and social opportunity to be shared across our society - so that the chances in life of Britain's next generation are not determined by where their parents came from, and so that nobody is left behind.

British Future's board of trustees includes a broad spectrum of individuals including journalist Ian Birrell, who worked for David Cameron during the 2010 general election as his speechwriter; Alasdair Murray, former Director of CentreForum, the liberal think tank; and the journalist Samira Ahmed. It is chaired by Wilf Weeks, who is a public affairs consultant and a trustee of Trust for London.

The projects developed a variety of innovative approaches, engaging mainly with groups of young people in neighbourhoods and schools. The findings show that lots of young people in the project areas were at risk of engaging in racist violence or held racist views but that prevention work can have a real impact on their behaviour and attitudes. The report challenges the limited approach of 'zero tolerance' as a response to racism, as this fails to address the underlying causes. It advocates a more proactive response, one which draws out the problem by providing 'safe spaces' to discuss and challenge these, with more focus on prevention.

The summary report highlights the key findings, outcomes and challenges of this work, whilst the full report has more detailed information on how the approaches were developed.

Download the Summary here
Download the Full report here

Preventing Racist Violence was widely covered in the media including:

Broadcast
Sunrise Radio
BBC London Radio
Colourful Radio

National Press
PRV Times Article 3 Jan 2012.pdf

Trade Press
Afro News
Africa News

Local Press
The Mercury page 16
News Shopper

Dagenham Post

The report updates a wide range of indicators on housing, work, health and income poverty to assess what has changed since the first report in 2009. The report includes a new section on services including GPs, primary schools and transport.

All the data and analysis in the new report are also available on the London's Poverty Profile website. Read the key findings of our new research or start exploring all the updated indicators.

The report was launched at an event at the Bishopsgate Institute, chaired by Channel 4 Social Affairs editor, Jackie Long. The event included a debate between Nick Pearce, Director of IPPR (the Institute for Public Policy Research) and Neil O'Brien, Director of Policy Exchange on the recent disturbances which took place in London and other parts of the country.

Media Coverage:
The Times (page 15)
The Guardian - Society
The Telegraph
The Guardian Online
Dave Hill's London Blog (The Guardian)
London Tonight (11 minutes in)
BBC London Television (14 minutes in)
BBC London Radio (1 hour in)
Sky News radio
The Huffington Post
Dave Hill's London Blog (The Guardian)
LBC
Sunrise radio
Inside Housing
24Dash
Charity Times

Download London's Poverty Profile 2011.

London's Poverty Profile is commissioned by Trust for London and produced by New Policy Institute.

Background

Since 2007, the economy, social policy and the welfare state in the UK have undergone a series of shocks and changes including the financial crash, a period of increased public spending between 2007 and 2010 followed by extensive cuts, and major reforms or changes in many areas of social policy. In combination, these can be expected to have substantial impacts on the distribution of incomes and wealth and the extent and distribution of state provision. There is reduced research funding within central government to monitor these changes and their social impacts.

Aim

This programme will produce an overall assessment of these changes, with a particular focus on their impacts on distribution, poverty, inequality and spatial differences. We will look at the period from 2007 to 2014, including assessments of change at different times within this period and at continuity and change with earlier periods.

Content

The work is quantitative in nature, and will cover four themes:

• analysis of social policy and public spending changes and their direct results. We will focus on four main areas of policy: personal taxation and social security (including pensions and employment policy), early years policy, education, health and social care.

• broader assessment of the overall distribution of economic outcomes, identifying groups who have gained and lost over different periods. This will build on and compared with the baseline Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK produced by the National Equality Panel which covered the period up to the recession in 2008

• new work using longitudinal studies on trends in social mobility and the impact of policy on access to opportunity, particularly in education and the early years;

• spatial analysis both of policy and spending and of outcomes in order to understand how the geography of poverty, inequality and opportunity is being shaped in the current economic and political climate. We will look at different spatial scales from countries to neighbourhoods. We will apply a spatial lens to our analysis of policy, spending and outcomes in the policy areas specified in Theme 1, and also to the analysis of economic outcomes in Theme 2. We will also examine the impact of 'localism' in additional policy areas (to be decided but could include, for example housing and planning and school education)

This is a long term and large scale programme and the research team will be keen to hear from and cooperate with other groups working on similar issues. Interim reports will be produced and events will be held throughout the programme with a final report in time to inform public policy debate before the next scheduled general election in May 2015.

London

Alongside the national research programme, Trust for London is also funding a parallel study to examine how London compares with the rest of the UK and at changing patterns within the capital. This will provide a robust, independent, and authoritative basis for public comment and debate on the situation in London in the coming years. It will include case studies of specific local authorities taking different approaches to spending cuts and service provision, to show how these impact on the poorest neighbourhoods and on particular groups of Londoners.

Timescales

The research will take place over the period October 2011 to May 2015. Initial reports will start to become available late in 2012 and early in 2013, via CASE's website.

Contact

To find out more, please contact the programme director, Dr Ruth Lupton.

Trust for London staff leads: Rachael Takens-Milne and Bharat Mehta

The 14 groups funded through this initiative have also organised a large number of workshops, strengthened networks and developed effective ways of conducting grass-roots community-based prevention work.

However, there are still many challenges in achieving the goal of eliminating this practice, not least the lack of a prosecution on FGM in the UK.

The evaluation is being undertaken by Options UK.

Download The FGM initiative - Interim Report.pdf

Read more about the Tackling FGM special initiative

Among other things, it will provide a comprehensive overview of social policy changes and public spending patterns, their differing impacts on different groups, and how the increase in localism has affected regional inequalities and the north/ south divide. It will also document how the overall distributions of income and wealth have been affected by the recession, spending cuts and changing policy.

The research team will examine the Coalition government's record in relation to its own claims to extend equality of opportunity and increase social mobility.

CASE has already produced two books on poverty and inequality under the Labour government up to 2007. Its Director, Professor John Hills, was chair of the National Equality Panel which produced an Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, reporting mainly on the situation up to 2008.

Alongside the national research, Trust for London is also funding a parallel study to examine how London compares with the rest of the UK and at changing patterns within the capital. This will provide a robust, independent, and authoritative basis for public comment and debate on the situation in London in the coming years. It will include case studies of specific local authorities taking different approaches to spending cuts and service provision, to show how these impact on the poorest neighbourhoods and on particular groups of Londoners.

Bharat Mehta OBE, Chief Executive of the Trust for London, said "At a time of cuts, it is critically important that research budgets are used to inform decision-making to ensure the poorest are not disproportionately affected."

Initial reports from the Social Policy in a Cold Climate research programme will start to become available late in 2012 and early in 2013, via CASE's website. To find out more, please contact the programme director, Dr Ruth Lupton.