Former Futurebuilders chief executive Richard Gutch is to head up a new commission that will create a strategy for ensuring public access to legal advice services, to influence policymakers in the run-up to the next general election.

The Justice for All Commission has been set up by the Legal Action Group with funding from the Baring Foundation and others, to look at how the government’s cuts to advice services funding and the legal aid budget, has affected provision of legal advice services, particularly to vulnerable people.

It will launch shortly and aims to publish, by December next year, a suggested strategy for ensuring that the public, especially the poor and marginalised, will have access to good-quality, independent legal advice.  This strategy will be used to inform and influence the political parties as they write their manifestoes ahead of the 2015 election.

Legal advice services, which fall under the umbrella heading of ‘social welfare law’ services, are delivered by public, private and voluntary sector groups and are currently paid for out of a combination of grants and contracts from local and national government, as well as charitable trusts and the private sector.  

But the money available for these services is due to fall sharply over the next few years as austerity measures bite – the government is already planning to cut £81m from the legal aid budget next April and other budgets that fund legal advice will sustain cuts too. 

The legal aid cuts alone mean that 371,800 people will miss out on advice and representation in social welfare law cases, according to the Legal Action Group.

A survey by campaign group Justice for All last May found that nearly a quarter of advice services in the sector said they were facing closure.

The members of the Commission are yet to be finalised but Richard Gutch has been appointed as its secretary, and a researcher will be hired to assist him.  Gutch was the first CEO of Futurebuilders England and has also been chief executive of Arthritis Care and the Disability Alliance. He was also secretary to the NCVO Funding Commission which reported in December 2010.

The Commission plans to host six to eight meetings during its tenure, with each one likely to focus on a separate area of law and potentially one or two other themes. It will consult widely and invite submissions from interested parties.

Its remit will include collating evidence of the impact of cuts; gathering ideas for new ways of funding legal advice services; looking at how local government might be persuaded to continue to support the sector, and make recommendations to government on the future strategy for services.