In times of deep inequality and shrinking services, politics is often framed like a David and Goliath battle. You see it in the mothers who this week challenged the London developers trying to stop their “social housing kids” playing in segregated play areas. Or the teachers and parents in Cambridge marching against Westminster’s crippling school funding cuts. But what you rarely hear is that behind every victorious David is a whole team lifting them up.

Another year of the benefits freeze will be too much pain for many Brits | Frances Ryan Read more

Possability People in Brighton is one such team. For the past 30 years, as well as providing other services, the charity has been running an advice centre for the local disabled community, dealing with anything from housing information, bus passes, help with care and food bank referrals to benefits applications. This is the smallest of teams – three part-time staff and a bank of volunteers, most of whom are disabled or chronically ill themselves – but for the people it reaches, the impact couldn’t be bigger. If your learning disability means you struggle to fill in complex forms, the advice team will help you get your benefits. If you’re facing eviction, the team will calm you down and look for accessible housing suitable for your wheelchair. It is the definition of a helping hand for people who need it most. “The reality for many people coming to our door [is] sometimes they’re too anxious even to open letters from the DWP [Department of Work and Pensions] without our support,” Geraldine Des Moulins, who runs the service, tells me.

At a time when every penny counts, it is also incredible value for money. It receives just £29,000 of funding from the local clinical commissioning group (CCG) and £6,000 from the local council, but in the past year alone, it gave face-to-face help to 2,200 people who walked through the advice centre’s door, and dealt with thousands more enquiries from disabled people, families and carers.

But last month, the local CCG told the charity it was pulling its entire funding for the advice centre – an 85% cut from the overall budget. Geraldine had no idea it was coming – “This came as a bolt out the blue,” she says – and the centre was given just three weeks’ notice to wind down the service before funding stopped. It means that, while the rest of the charity’s work can continue, this Monday, the advice centre closed its doors to people needing help. “The advice centre is often the last port of call for people who find themselves in desperate situations,” Geraldine says. “To have this lifeline taken away seems particularly cruel.”

What’s happening to Possability People in Brighton, though, is not some sort of blip – it’s a state of affairs being replicated up and down the country. You could call it the mass disenfranchisement of citizens, where marginalised groups see their right to housing, healthcare and social security withheld and are then deprived of the means to fight back.

A cocktail of legal aid cuts combined with the gutting of councils and squeezed CCGs mean local advice centres – from welfare rights and mediation services to legal support – are closing, at the same time as other austerity measures, such as disability benefit cuts, mean that the need for them is rising. Between 2007 and 2017, the number of requests to Possability People’s advice centre increased by a staggering 300%. As policies such as the roll-out of universal credit hit over the last year, Geraldine says this rise is only continuing. “We’re working to capacity and often have to operate a waiting list.”

When I took this to NHS Brighton and Hove CCG, a spokesperson told me that NHS funding can’t keep up with demand which “means we have to focus NHS funding on supporting services which have been proven to have the most impact on people’s health and that are not already provided in the community”. They added that, “over 80% of contacts for this service are related to benefits help and Brighton and Hove has a wide range of other community and voluntary sector services that support people with these needs”.

But take a glance at the equality impact assessment put together by the CCG and it’s there in black and white: if Possability People “were to scale down or close, it would negatively impact disabled people”, including the risk that some would have to go through a lengthy benefit appeal because, with no support to fill in the forms, they could be wrongfully rejected for them.

“It’s a false economy,” Geraldine says, and not just with benefits. “Anyone with any common sense will know that if you’re worried that you can’t pay your rent or put food on the table this will impact detrimentally on your physical and mental health. If you can’t navigate the system and don’t receive support, [your] next port of call is often the GP which is much more expensive than our offer.”

Geraldine is working round the clock to find alternative funding – she’s even considering crowdfunding online. In the meantime, the centre only has enough money to run a telephone service – in practice, one of the team picking up the phone to a worried caller and signposting them on to another service in the city. The worst part is, Geraldine knows that the same cuts that have left the advice centre with little more than a phone line means she’s essentially sending desperate disabled people to another service that likely can’t help them either. “They’re already working at capacity too.”

• Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist