Law Centres

Standing up for the rights of ordinary citizens - Birmingham's law centres are having to fight for their very survival.

Birmingham's two free law centres at Handsworth and Small Heath are under threat. Government funding has been withdrawn and, with the recession biting, Birmingham City Council appears reluctant to step-in and pick up the bill. As Vera Gilbert finds out in this report for Central Television's Here and Now programme, without the law centres many people would be left facing the state's fiendishly complex legal system on their own.