• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / Councils’ grants decision puts DPO at risk

Councils’ grants decision puts DPO at risk

By guest on 1st December 2010 Category: News Archive

Listen

A disabled people’s organisation (DPO) which provides advice and information on accessible transport in London is set to lose its main source of funding just three months before the capital hosts the 2012 Paralympics.

Transport for All (TfA) is just one of the disability organisations set to lose funding after a decision to scrap large parts of a London-wide grants programme.

Faryal Velmi, director of TfA, said she was “very, very angry” about the decision by London Councils (LC), which was agreed by leaders of London’s 33 local authorities this week.

LC will fund far fewer services under the grants programme, set up more than 20 years ago to address “social issues of London-wide significance”.

Only schemes that can “reasonably” be delivered on a London-wide basis will now be funded. Other services will be left to local councils to support, with nearly all of these projects losing their LC funding by the end of June 2011.

Some London-wide services – including TfA – will also lose their chance of future grants when their funding runs out, because of a new slimmed-down list of funding priorities, which does not include transport.

The grants programme will be cut from £26.4 million to £18.48 million in 2011-12, and is set to plunge to just £8 million in 2012-13.

Disability Law Service (DLS) is another disability organisation set to lose out under the LC plans.

In June 2011, it will lose funding for a project that provides disabled people with legal representation to take discrimination cases, although a DLS health and social care project has survived the cull.

Linda Clarke, director of DLS, said the loss of the funding was “very disappointing news” and the charity would now have to “assess our options”.

Velmi warned that the money being clawed back from LC by local authorities was unlikely to be used to replace the lost grants because it was not ring-fenced.

TfA receives £100,000 a year from LC – the bulk of its funding – and provides advice, information and training to 5,000 disabled and older Londoners a year, has set up the first pan-London mobility forum, and feeds back the views of disabled Londoners to transport providers.

But unless it can source alternative funding, it could be forced to close in the summer of 2012, just three months before the accessible transport infrastructure will come under huge pressure when London hosts the Paralympics.

A London Councils spokeswoman said that, when deciding which areas to continue funding, members had focused on those areas “most likely to have a positive impact on equalities”, while individual boroughs would also take equality issues into account when deciding which services to continue funding.

16 December 2010

Share this post:

TwitterFacebookWhatsAppReddit

Related

‘Muddled’ blue badge reforms ‘are to blame for renewal delays’
6th February 2015
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
6th February 2015
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
30th January 2015

Primary Sidebar

Access

Latest Stories

Disabled high-rise leaseholders are living in post-Grenfell fear of fire and financial ruin

Disabled people highlight scores of lockdown concerns

Regulator investigates DWP over universal credit ‘cover-up’

Tomlinson held just a handful of external meetings every month early in pandemic

US retail giant faces legal action over new face covering rule

Minister allows transport industry its fourth exemption from access laws

Government’s pandemic failings caused us ‘horrendous’ challenges, say DPOs

Watchdog has approved care settings for COVID patients in only three-fifths of areas

High court is asked to order fresh inquest into death of Jodey Whiting

MPs call for inquiry into government’s role in COVID deaths of disabled people

Advice and Information

DWP: The case for the prosecution

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web