Many moons ago – way back in April 2020 to be precise – we shared an update on our Strengthening Civil Society (SCS) programme, outlining our priorities for the next five years. We were already in an uncertain world then, and that definitely hasn’t changed. Regardless, we have remained utterly impressed by the huge amounts of work our grantholders continue to do to tackle injustice and create better societies. You can see a full list of grants we have awarded through the programme here.
Our strategy: where we are heading
Before the word pandemic became a regular addition to all our vocabularies, we commissioned an independent evaluation to help us learn from the first five years of the programme. This highlighted for us the crucial role collaboration plays in ensuring successful legal action. With this in mind, we renewed the purpose of the programme – to support the use of the law and human rights based approaches by civil society – for another five years, until 2025.
We committed to growing capacity in the sector for collaborative legal action, investing further in successful models and seed-funding new ways of working. We agreed three strategic pillars to guide this work:
- Access to public law – protecting and promoting access to public law remedies;
- Geography – recognising and supporting strategies in different parts of the UK; and
- Leadership – creating opportunities to develop collective leadership on legal action.
In 2020, we redirected our budget to respond to the pandemic. You can see some of our learning from our Covid-19 funding here. From the second half of 2021 we started to focus on these priorities.
Money out of the door: our funding so far in this strategy cycle
In 2021, we spent just over £2m supporting expert legal civil society organisations (CSOs) who are working with non-legal CSOs to understand when, where and how they can use legal action to further their campaigning objectives. We believe that this collaborative approach, which we refer to as ‘hub activity’, is crucial to achieving change using legal tools.
That year, we also prioritised a new thematic focus: addressing racial injustice in the criminal justice system (CJS). So far, we have supported 16 organisations who are using legal tools to affect change in this area, and appointed a lead learning partner, Dr Patrick Williams, to support the cohort going forward. We also commissioned a piece of research looking at how legal action has been used to address racism in the UK since 1990.
Leadership
In 2022, we explored options for developing collective leadership on legal action, bringing together our grantholders who use legal action as part of their core work for a two-day residential to unpack their needs in this area. The residential was everything we had hoped: both hugely enjoyable and providing an invaluable space for peer organisations to meet and reflect.
From what our grantholders told us at the residential, we identified two areas needing additional focus: effective litigation strategies and better collaboration. We decided to commission three organisations from the cohort of grantholders to host a residential each year for the next three years. These will bring grantholders back together for in-depth reflection and brainstorming on effective litigation strategies and better collaboration. We hope this approach will strengthen relationships across the sector, enable people to have transformative conversations, and ultimately lead to work which brings about long-term social change.
Geography
The use of the law by CSOs to bring about social change varies around the UK, with a dearth of activity in entire regions. We know that law centres around the country, in addition to supporting individuals, use insights from their work to try to influence policymakers to achieve social change. They are uniquely placed to understand the needs of civil society in their area. So as part of our commitment to supporting work around the country, last year, we began a new partnership with the Law Centres Network (LCN).
We awarded LCN a grant of just over £550,000 to develop a project to support law centres to develop ‘hub activities’. Vauxhall Law Centre (Liverpool), Suffolk Law Centre (Ipswich), and Derbyshire Law Centre (Chesterfield) were identified via an open call to LCN’s membership and have all begun hub activities in recent years. We are excited to see their work develop.
Access to public law remedies
In the last three years, we have also supported efforts by CSOs to defend access to public law remedies and human rights frameworks. We know such frameworks are important for communities to remedy some of the injustices and harm they have faced at the hands of public bodies. Additionally, we see the existence of these frameworks as an important part of a functioning democracy.
Our priorities for 2023
In 2023, we will continue building on the work of the past two years, supporting grantholders to better collaborate and supporting leadership development in the sector. We will be prioritising planning law as a thematic focus for new funding partnerships, supporting communities to shape the places they call home.
For our racial justice work, we will have an open funding call in the first half of the year for organisations based in the North of England who are using legal tools to address racism in the criminal justice system. Additionally, we will be researching the history of the use of legal action to address racism in the criminal justice system and the opportunities and obstacles this approach presents for bringing about change.
The year ahead also presents many opportunities for new collaborations, including specific initiatives for human rights in Scotland and Northern Ireland. These developments will be published on our website as they launch. Finally, as always, we will continue to engage with funders and civil society on ongoing threats to civil society’s access to public law remedies and human rights.
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