National law foundation Access To Justice Foundation are helping to fund the charity’s work.

The Access To Justice Foundation (ATJF) gave the centre, which is run by the Ipswich and Suffolk Council for Racial Equality (ISCRE), a grant to help maintain cover costs for the charity’s immigration services.

Audrey Ludwig, ISCRE’s director of legal services, said: “this will make a real difference to our clients as we will be able to provide a higher level of advice and a wider range of services in the future.

“We are also immensely grateful to Angela Cole and Sallie Davies of Immigration Legal Services as they are at the heart of our volunteer immigration law service and without whose hundreds of hours of free legal advice each other, there would be far less support for some of the most vulnerable in our society.”

Jon Siddall, ATJF’s chief operating officer said: “the Access to Justice Foundation is pleased to support ISCRE’s important work in providing pro bono services to meet increasing demand for immigration advice in Suffolk.”

The money will help to support the centre’s volunteer immigraton services by helping the purchase of specialist supervision from other law centres as well as covering the cost of interpretor and additional laptops for the service.

The grant given by the ATJF will not be used to fund the proposed Suffolk Law Centre which ISCRE has been leading the appeal for the past few months.

The charity says that a new centre would give free legal advice to those who needed it , as is the case at the moment, but would also take on casework and the representation of people who cannot afford to pay legal fees.

So far around £9,500 has been raised towards the £40,000 required to create the proposed centre.

“The county needs a law centre as more and more residents find themselves unable to afford the costs of defending their basic rights.

“We are hopeful that we can hit our target and bring Suffolk into line with most other parts of the country,” said Audrey from ISCRE.

Anyone who would like to donate money for the new centre should email the charity on ALawCentreforSuffolk@iscre.org.uk or send a cheque payable to ISCRE to the charity’s Ipswich office in St Matthews Street.