Domestic violence charities in legal action against council after losing funding

The Empowerment charity has said that it needs £275,000 from the authority to run its independent domestic violence advice services in the Lancaster area, the Lancaster Guardian reports.

It will take action jointly with Preston Domestic Violence Services, which is said to have lost £400,000 worth of funding.

The charities lost out in a tendering process and other organisations were awarded money to deliver the services.

Empowerment chief executive Ellen Miller, said: “We are devastated by the county council’s decision to cut our funding and bring in someone else. We don’t think the process has been at all fair.

“We’ve been working on short term contracts for the last couple of years and now they’ve come up with a fundamentally flawed procurement process, with terrible consequences for us.”

Lancashire County Council was unable to comment.