Domestic Abuse Charity Compares Council to ‘Abuse Perpetrator After Funding Slashed With Little Warning’

The head of one of the country’s biggest domestic abuse charities has compared the actions of Cheshire East Council with that of a “domestic abuse perpetrator”. 

The council told the charity in mid-January that it plans to stop funding MyCWA — Cheshire Without Abuse — after nine years.   

“The council has been very bullying,” Saskia Lightburn-Ritchie claimed to Byline Times, adding: “It’s the same approach as a domestic abuse perpetrator: monopolising people’s perspective of us by sharing misinformation, removing our access to data, refusing to speak to us, and going behind our back.”

At the forefront of Lightburn-Ritchie’s concerns are the 14 adults and seven children in the charity’s refuge accommodation receiving intensive support, who she fears will be forced into hostels. 

“I’m terrified what will happen if we’re not there. The people with us at the moment are settled. It’ll be a terrible disruption to families that don’t need extra trauma,” she says. 

Lightburn-Ritchie, who lived in a refuge when she was a young parent, says it can be “really devastating” to live in a hostel — but this is often the only option for women fleeing abusive partners. An estimated 2.3 million adults (1.6 million women and 712,000 men) suffered domestic abuse in the UK last year, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Along with its emergency refuge — one of the 5% across the country that allows pets — many of the charity’s other services were instantly put at risk, including crisis support, adult and child survivor recovery programmes, behaviour change interventions, and practical support, by the council’s funding move. The charity is the primary provider of non-statutory domestic abuse support in Cheshire East, and supported 4,00 adults and children last year.

MyCWA was already supplementing its funding from the council and, over the past year, spent £300,000 delivering services. For every £1 invested, MyCWA saves the public purse £8.37, a Women’s Aid report previously found.

Two years ago, Cheshire East Council said that ending its contract with MyCWA — the only commissioned domestic abuse refuge in the area —would put women and girls at greater risk of domestic abuse, and potentially cause more women to be murdered and die by suicide. 

It recommended working with MyCWA for another five years — and gave the charity two successive six-month extensions while it figured out its domestic abuse strategy, Lightburn-Ritchie says. 

The council’s decision to stop funding MyCWA is part of a national pattern of refuges closing or turning women away due to chronic underfunding. 

Many hostels around the country are at breaking point after years of underfunding, says Abigail Ampofo, interim chief executive of Refuge. And many councils, she adds, are reducing or freezing budgets for VAWG services, which, she says, are essential in supporting the Government’s mission to halve VAWG within the next decade. 

In response to findings that cases of domestic violence are rising, the National Police Chief’s Council, in July 2024, emphasised the importance of services supporting women and girls. 

However, after there was no mention of VAWG in the Labour Government’s first budget, charities called for £516 million per year in England, to ensure that survivors can access early interventions with specialist domestic abuse services. The autumn budget fell short of the sector’s expectations, making funding domestic abuse services even more difficult for councils across the country. More recently, the Crime and Policing Bill, introduced to parliament on February 25, made no explicit mention of domestic abuse.

There have been warnings that, because councils aren’t obliged to fund most domestic abuse services, the mounting financial pressure they’re facing means that domestic abuse services will likely be reduced or cut altogether. 

For seven months before Cheshire East Council ended its funding via email, Lightburn-Richie said it ghosted the charity. She was then given nine weeks’ notice — but says the council had previously assured her it would provide at least six months’ warning.

Then, one week after the council’s email, and with one hour’s notice, the charity claims it was cut off from an online database it shared with the council, holding the data of 300 vulnerable MyCWA clients. That weekend, Lightbutn-Ritche says a client was stabbed by their partner, and CWA was unable to contact them because it didn’t have their details.

Lightburn-Ritchie says that when she contacted the landlords of the buildings where the charity’s refuges were located, she was told they’d all been instructed by the council to end their leases with MyCWA. 

“The council has been sharing misinformation,” she told Byline Times. “It told counsellors we’ve been refusing to meet with them for six months, and that our contract came to an end and we’re just disgruntled. 

“It says it was decided at the end of 2023 that it was bringing services in-house, but we’ve been through every council meeting since then and it isn’t mentioned once.”

Lightburn-Ritche doesn’t believe the council’s replacement services will offer the same level of specialist support for women and girls as the charity provides, and warned that “more than 70% of victims of domestic abuse won’t speak to a council-run service“. 

The charity set up a fundraising campaign in January, which has raised £160,000. This means some of its services are safe, for now — but it’s lost 40% of its turnover, and none of its services in Cheshire East will survive. It has also had to start redundancy talks.

While the charity says it can continue to provide some services in the short term, its future remains uncertain.

“I’m very worried for the safety of the people we’re working with. We’re holding 321 cases and many are high risk, but we still don’t have access to their data,” Lightburn-Ritche said.

She says the council finally agreed to a meeting with her, but when she asked what would happen to the families in refuge, she claims the council said it didn’t know. 

“We can’t give any reassurance to the women in the refuge, because we’re not getting any,” Lightburn-Ritche says. 

Councillor Carol Bulman, chair of Cheshire East Council’s children and families committee, said while the council recognise MYCWA “played an important role, they were never tasked with delivering all domestic abuse-related services across Cheshire East”. She added that the council provides a “robust suite of in-house services” and had a number of “strong partnerships” in the community, including with Cheshire Police.

“Together, these services ensure comprehensive, integrated support for children, young people, victims, and perpetrators of domestic abuse,” Bulman said.

She added that McCWA was commissioned on a fixed-term contract to supplement the council’s services until March 2025: “As this contract is nearing its end, it does not require a formal notice of termination. The terms of the agreement clearly oblige the contract holder to provide an exit strategy to ensure the seamless transfer of services.”

In response to the charity’s claims about being denied access to essential client data, Bulman said MyCMA needs to request it, “and we will ensure it is provided securely”.

Bulman further added that the charity had informed the council that its client information is kept on the police system, NICHE, “to which they have full access”.

“We are in continuous dialogue with MyCWA and our partners to ensure that current tenants will be secure in their accommodation from the end of March. Our primary focus remains on ensuring that the needs of current and future safe accommodation tenants are met,” Bulman said.

Responding to the council’s claims, Lightburn-Ritche said the charity requested 321 case records on 21 January 2025, and it took seven weeks to complete. She added that access to both the council and the police NICHE system was limited.