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Legal help: what the records show from outside

A body sees its own members and the people who reach them. Public records see every charity in England at once. This page sets the two side by side for legal help: who else does this work, where the network is thin, how exposed the field is, and how the people it serves are written about.

1. Who else does this work

320 charities in England are in this field by name or by membership. 840 other charities, outside it, say in their own latest annual report that they serve the same people: 72.5% of all the charities that name them. By what the register records them as doing:

Register purpose	Charities outside the field naming the people
Education/training	505
Poverty relief	470
General charitable purposes	389
Economic/community development, employment	300
Health	257
Disability	235
Human rights, equality	213
Other purposes	157
Housing	139
Arts, culture, heritage, science	127
Amateur sport	76
Recreation	69

A charity records up to three purposes, so the rows overlap.

Among them, charities that are themselves in another of the fields on this site: 23 disability services; 17 food aid; 14 mental health; 9 local infrastructure; 9 veterans; 9 older people living alone; 8 homelessness; 8 befriending.

Of those outside the field, 29.1% show under three months’ reserves or three years of deficits, against 24.6% of the field itself.

2. Where the network is thin

69 of the 152 county and unitary areas of England record no presence of Law Centres Network’s network: no listed place, and no member charity recording the area. The median share of residents on low incomes in those areas is 24.7%, against 24.6% across England.

Area	Share of residents on low incomes	Thin in how many of 24 fields on this site
Newham	39.7%	12
Middlesbrough	38.7%	10
Barking and Dagenham	38.6%	16
Blackpool	37.8%	13
Sandwell	37.7%	9
Blackburn with Darwen	37.4%	12
Kingston upon Hull	36.5%	8
Wolverhampton	36.3%	13
Hartlepool	36.3%	16
Walsall	35.9%	13
Stoke-on-Trent	33.3%	12
Peterborough	31.3%	12
Sunderland	31.2%	8
North East Lincolnshire	30.3%	10
Rotherham	29.9%	8

The 15 with the most residents on low incomes are shown, of 69.

Across every field on this site, the areas thin in most of them: Isles of Scilly (17 of 21), Barking and Dagenham (16 of 24), Portsmouth (16 of 24), Hartlepool (16 of 25), Rutland (16 of 25), Thurrock (16 of 25), City of London (15 of 24), Havering (15 of 24), Hillingdon (15 of 24), Lambeth (14 of 24).

What this can and cannot say. A thin area is one where the body’s own listed places and its charities’ recorded areas of operation are few for the people counted there. It does not mean nobody there gets help: section 1 is the measure of who else is at work.

3. Money and exposure

Fragile means under three months’ reserves on the latest return, or spending above income for three years running. Government-dependent means half or more of income from government grants and contracts.

Group	Charities	Fragile	Reserves (months, median)	Income change over returns (median)	Donations share (median)
The field	318	24.8%	4.3	19.6%	0.9%
All other charities in England	67,790	20.8%	4.4	39.7%	29.4%
The field, government-dependent	128	24.2%	4.7	13.7%	0.7%
The field, not dependent	190	25.3%	4.2	25.9%	1.2%
The field, in the most deprived third of neighbourhoods	156	25.0%	4.8	18.9%	0.5%
The field, in the least deprived third	35	25.7%	4.3	20.2%	2.1%

40.0% of the field is government-dependent.

4. How the people are written about

Of the 990 charities whose latest report names people needing legal help, 17.5% write of them beside words of lack (vulnerable, struggling, crisis, hardship, isolated) and 24.4% beside words of what they bring (skills, work, leadership, confidence, potential, independence). Across every population on this site the sector’s figures are 23.4% and 25.5%. This field’s people are written about mostly by what they bring.

5. Law Centres Network’s members against the rest of the field

36 charities in the field are on Law Centres Network’s own list or record its membership; 284 are not.

Measure	Members	Rest of the field
Fragile (share)	27.8%	24.5%
Government-dependent (share)	50.0%	38.7%
Reserves, months (median)	4.2	4.4
Income change over returns, % (median)	11.5	22.1
Donations share, % (median)	1	0.9
Income, £ (median)	898,313	697,190
No income source over 60% (share)	9.7%	4.8%
Report names the people (share)	100.0%	40.3%
Writes of what they bring (share)	91.7%	34.2%

A figure is shown only for a group of five or more; a median is of the charities with the figure on their return.

What this can and cannot say. These are counts over groups of charities and places in England, from their own returns and reports and from national statistics. They show where a field stands beside the rest of the sector; they do not rank any charity, name any, or say why.