My charity of the month for June is the Law Centres Federation, which may not be an organisation you have ever heard of.  However no doubt you will have heard of Law Centres.  Some of you may have used one.  The Law Centres Federation is the organisation which supports and promotes them.

Law Centres are set up to provide legal help to those who cannot afford to use professional lawyers.  They tend to specialise in work such as welfare, housing, family law, and human rights.  The sorts of things that ’standard’ firms of solicitors generally do not cover.

Law centres are always on the edge of financial disaster, even those which have the support of wealthy city law firms.  Several have had to close in recent years, which  means that there is no longer anyone around to help those in need of legal assistance in their areas.

Providing legal help does not sound very important to many people, who often prefer to support charities for health issues, children, animals and the environment.  However being able to get justice thorugh the courts is, or should be, a fundamental human right.  So often the things that lawyers help people with are of huge importance in their lives.  A living wage.  Protection from a violent partner.  Fighting for decent housing.  And challenging injustice generally.

I fear for the law centres in the current economic climate, and feel sure that supporting legal aid (which is where law centres get most of their funding) and legal charities  generally are going to be way down the importance list for a government keen to make cuts.  So I hope that any of you who have the opportunity, will support and speak up for your local law centre, and do what you can to keep it open.  Justice for all is an important plank of our civilization.  We should fight for it.

You can find out how you can get involved >> here.

There have been a lot of announcements recently from the government about housing law reform, and what they intend to do in the private rented sector.   Whether any of these proposals will actually come to pass is not certain.  However I (along with many others) am concerned about the approach taken by this government, both in respect of their initiatives in the private rented sector and indeed generally as regards legal aid.

Legal Aid
Long term readers of this blog will know that I have written extensively in the past on legal aid, and have expressed concern, along with other law professionals, at what appears to be the gradual destruction of our once proud legal aid system.  This was set up by a Labour government in 1949, and was at that time considered to be an essential service along with the national health service.

In the past
When I first started to practice law in the 1980’s, virtually all law firms offered a legal aid service, along with their work for fee paying clients.  Someone on a low income could get legal help and assistance from almost any firm they wanted.  However in the past 15 years or so, this has all changed.  Now hardly any firms do legal aid, and it is extremely difficult for people to get help for housing, welfare, and similar legal problems.

Giving with one hand …
It ironic that the government which gave us the Human Rights Act 1998 has taken away the ability for many people to use it.  We live in a complex society and our laws are therefore complex also, as a reflection of this.  Inevitably it will be difficult for ordinary people to enforce the legal rights which are available to them, without professional legal help.

Yet this government seems intent on dismantling the legal aid system, and is making it more difficult for people in need to get proper help.

The recent PRS announcements
A prime example of this is the recent announcement by Mr John Healey, the minister for housing.  He accepts that tenants need help, but what is he offering them?  A tripadvisor type web-site and a telephone helpline.  However what tenants in difficulty *need*, is to see a qualified and experienced lawyer face to face.  Yet this is something the government appears reluctant to countenance.

What tenants actually need
Face to face advice, in particular for people who are disadvantaged (which will include vast numbers of tenants), is really essential.  As I discussed in 2006, telephone advice can be worse than useless.

To advise properly you need to see the paperwork.  An experienced housing solicitor can often get a complete understanding of a situation from just a brief glance through the papers.  He will then be able to advise on the correct course of action with confidence.  However a tenant at the end of a telephone line will not know the significance of the paperwork they hold.  They may, for example refer to a courts summons as an injunction, and fail to mention altogether documents which are crucial in the understanding of their case.

What happened to joined up thinking?
Proper professional advice can not only help the client, it can also in the long term reduce public expenditure.  For example there was a report recently in Shelter’s magazine Roof, about a recent case where a young man, who had got into a bit of a muddle with his rent.  Through the help of an experienced solicitor from the South West London Law Centre, he was able to bring a claim under the Human Rights Act against the Local Authority who were seeking to evict him.  He is now assured of accommodation.  Making him homeless would have done no-one any good, and if he had ended up sleeping on the streets, he could have developed medical problems which would then have been a cost to the National Health Service.

Save our Law Centres
The South West London Law centre is fortunate in that it receives support from City law firms (not normally short of a bob or two).  However even so it is finding it extremely difficult to survive.  Many law centres have closed over the past few years and others have major funding problems.  Yet law centers such as this are crucial for helping the under privileged.

If Mr Healey really wants to support and help tenants, providing more funding for law centres might be a better way of doing it. Rather than funding a ‘tripadvisor’ type web-site which is not going to do much to help needy tenants (many of whom won’t even have access to a computer), and will only serve to antagonise the landlord community who, understandably, consider it to be invitation to malicious tenants with a grudge to ‘bad mouth’ them.

Law Reform
Then there is the question of law reform generally.  The Law Commission was set up specifically to review the law, and make recommendations for reform.  From about 2003 it conducted a major review of  housing law and carried out a consultation exercise where literally hundreds of landlords, tenants, and advisors were spoken to and/or submitted responses. This culminated in 2006 with a final report, the Renting Homes Report, and an accompanying draft bill.  Shamefully, this major and well thought out report has been completely ignored.

What is the point of having a respected organisation such as the Law Commission, with expert lawyers such as Professor Martin Partington (who headed up much of the housing project), conduct an expensive and detailed review, if you are going to completely ignore it?

The governments main reaction was to commission yet another report (no doubt hoping that this would bring forth the ‘right answers’) from Dr Julie Rugg.  However the actions which are now proposed (including the proposed ill thought out reforms to the planning system) follow neither the (generally excellent) advice of Dr Rugg nor that of the Law Commission (although there are  elements of both).

The Law Society’s Manifesto
The Law Society, as the representative body for solicitors, who form the largest part of this country’s legal profession, has recently issued a ‘manifesto‘ setting out its position and its concerns. It looks at four main areas:

• The rule of law and access to justice
• The defence of the rights of the people
• Good governance and better law-making
• A strong and independent legal services sector

The document makes some very important points, and I hope that both those in power at present, and those hoping to be in power, will read it and take note.  You can download the pdf here.

The tenancy deposit disaster
One of the points the Law Society make is about ill drafted legislation and unintended consequences. We have seen this with the tenancy deposit legislation, added as a late amendment to the Housing Act 2004.

Although generally based on a good idea, the drafting of the clauses have proved so problematic that we are at the time of writing left with a situation where a tenant’s right to recover the penalty award of three time the deposit money (supposed to be there as a deterrent to landlords) is now dependent on the rules of the tenancy deposit scheme concerned.  Surely it should be the terms of the Housing Act which decide this, not a third parties terms and conditions?

Is this what we want?
One of the problems we have, and in particular with legal aid, is the general negative attitude people have towards the legal profession.  Generally people’s response when learning about cuts in the legal aid scheme is something along the lines of “good, that will stop all those greedy lawyers making fat profits from our money”.

Leaving aside the fact that legal aid lawyers are finding it difficult to make any sort of profit at all, let alone a fat one, the fact is that in the long run it it is not going to be the lawyers who will suffer.  They are all pretty clever people with a good qualification, they will find something else to do (and will probably be a lot better off financially as a result).  The people who will suffer will be the clients, desperately in need of good legal help, but with no-one available to provide it.

Is that the sort of society we want to live in?

I had a conversation recently with a worker at a legal ‘not for profit’ organisation (who wishes to remain anonymous) who is in despair about their Housing Court Desk Duty Scheme. She had been using student volunteers in addition to the qualified helpers. The student volunteers were all law students from a local college. They were really enthusiastic, worked hard, and the scheme was going well. However she has now been told that, for schemes funded by the LSC, all advisors must either be qualified solicitors or be doing 12 hours per week housing law case work. So she can’t use the students any more.

I assume that the LSC have made this stipulation so that they can assure ‘quality’. However the effect of this is to make the scheme very difficult to run. Although they are generally willing to help, in the present financial climate local solicitors will need to spend most of their time on fee earning work, to enable their firm to stay solvent. They are not going to have a lot of free time available for voluntary work, bearing in mind that there are very few solicitors nowadays who specialise in this area of work anyway.

It is ridiculous to say that only solicitors and those carrying heavy housing law caseloads can give advice to people facing repossession. With proper training, anyone sensible who understand the legal system can do it. I would have thought that law students were eminently suitable for this work, plus it will enable them to gain experience which will help them in their careers, and may even encourage them to specialise in the area of housing and welfare work in the future.

It reminds me of when I used to do volunteer work for a local legal charity. I was donating my time entirely free of charge but the Legal Services Commission’s expectations were wholly unreasonable. For example they demanded that I physically attend the office for a certain amount of time each week (which would take up more time that I was able to give, bearing in mind that I also needed to earn a living) whether this was actually needed or not. This is one of the main reasons why I resigned.

It seems that not only have the LSC virtually destroyed the network of legal aid solicitors that previously existed, they are also (still) making life difficult for volunteer services.

Although it is not directly related to housing law, I feel I ought to draw readers attention to an excellent comment in the Law Society Gazette from Michael Burdett who previously helped the Legal Services Commission (LSC) to set up the CDS (i.e. Criminal Defence Service) direct scheme.

As someone who has worked with the LSC he ought to know something about them. His view is that the savings claimed for the expanded CDS Direct scheme are misrepresented and that the LSC have failed to answer his request for a breakdown of how they have been calculated.

He goes on to say that the expanded CDS is probably of questionable legality, that the ‘hypocritical and bureaucratic attitude’ shown by the LSC in this is being replicated elsewhere, and that their ‘arrogant and devious approach’ towards reform of both civil and criminal legal aid has destroyed the goodwill of the profession.

This is all so sad. In the 1940s when legal aid was first set up, it was conceived as a twin service to the National Health Service. So people of modest means would have access to both medical and legal help. When I first started work as a lawyer, all firms did legal aid, even the very large ones. Now hardly anyone does. When tenants on benefit ring me up asking for representation, it is very difficult to think of anywhere I can refer them other than our local Shelter office.

As Michael Burdett says in his article, it is worrying that people’s right to legal help is being circumscribed at a time when the police and the state are being given unprecedented powers over the citizen.

We are told that all this is in the interests of the taxpayer as it will cost less. But this just reflects my blog item below – things being valued solely on the basis of how much they cost. And is a miniscule reduction in our tax really an adequate compensation for being unable to receive independent legal help if we are unjustly detained by the police? As others have pointed out, compared to the National Health Service budget and defence costs, the Legal Aid Budget is miniscule.

It is all very worrying.

I was very concerned to read in the Law Society Gazette today that if the proposed reforms to legal aid go ahead, it will lead to the ‘immediate dismantlement’ of specialist civil liberty legal teams in some firms. This is because cases dealt with by specialist providers tend to be more complex and time-consuming and are likely to be unprofitable under the reformed ‘fixed fee’ system. Government cannot expect solicitors to maintain a service if it is going to be run at a loss or at no profit.

Michael Schwarz, partner and Bindman & Partners said “Clients will not have access to specialist lawyers and their human rights will be at risk. It will be an encouragement for negligence or abuse by state officials, and is a recipe for injustice.”

A LSC spokesman trotted out the usual statement saying that the numbers of people helped has increased. But we all know that statistics can be very misleading. Maybe more people wanting to know what to do about their grazed knees after tripping on a paving stone in the High Street have been advised via a telephone helpline, but what about those with serious human rights problems who need more specialised help? Does giving basic legal telephone help to ten people really equate to a better service than helping one person with a serious but expensive human rights problem? It is certainly cheaper, so maybe in government-speak it is.

It is ironic that the government which introduced the Human Rights Act is now going to be responsible for taking away the ability of people to use it.