Campbell Robb
The housing charity 'simply cannot fill the gap' as it faces loss of up to £3m in funding, according to chief executive Campbell Robb
Shelter has warned it might have to shed up to 100 jobs as it faces losing up to £3m in funding.
The housing and homelessness charity, which had an income of £52.9m in 2011/12, receives legal aid for its face-to-face advice services, worth about £6m a year.
The charity said that government cuts to legal aid mean that up to 50 per cent of this money could be lost.
The reductions could result in the closure of 10 of the charity’s housing advice services nationwide, and the loss of 100 jobs by March.
Shelter, which employs about 1,250 people at the charity and in its trading arm, said in December that four jobs in its communications department could be lost, but stressed that it was doing everything possible to keep redundancies to a minimum.
Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said it had been a difficult decision to come up with proposals to close the advice centres and that the charity had campaigned against the cuts to legal aid.
"The cuts have meant some difficult decisions about how we best use the resources we have to help those in housing need," said Robb. "While service closures are absolutely a last resort, we simply cannot fill the gap created by the scale of these cuts with other sources. We are consulting with the staff affected at this difficult time."
