Projects and Campaigns

Specialist legal advice provided by Law Centres can help people to transform their lives.  Law Centres aim to go farther and to help to transform communities.

By spotting trends in the needs of our local communities we can respond by raising awareness of available legal rights and remedies of individuals, adapting our services and presenting reports to policy makers to influence changes in policy.  We can look at new ways of making a difference.

Mortgage Pre-Action Advice Clinic / Tenancy Deposit Protection Clinic

Thanks to a grant from Barclays Wealth we are setting up an evening advice clinic service to deal with housing law issues for people on a low income but who are normally ineligible for legal aid funding.

As the clinic will be run by volunteers under the supervision of the Law Centre housing team the areas of work will be restricted to advice in connection with mortgage arrears for owner-occupiers and protection (and recovery) of tenancy deposits for people renting in the private sector.

We hope that this will bring together the skills and time of volunteer lawyers and law students and the unmet need of people on a low income for specialist level legal advice which they could not otherwise obtain.

We are currently recruiting volunteers.  Please refer to the Get Involved section of this website for more details.

Responding to the Consultation by the Ministry of Justice – Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales (November 2010)

The proposals effect availability of legal aid across the entire range of non-criminal legal issues e.g: divorce, access to children, debt, welfare benefits, education, employment, community care, mental health and consumer law: as well housing and asylum and immigration law.

We estimate that the proposals if implemented would remove availability of legal aid to approximately 40% of the Law Centre’s housing law clients and over 90% of the Law Centre’s Immigration clients.

Responses to the Consultation were submitted by both the Housing and Asylum & Immigration teams at the Law Centre.  We have supported the Justice for All campaign with all members of the team along with volunteers and supporters sending Secretary of State Kenneth Clarke an email “love legal aid”
Valentines Day cards.

The Law Centres Federation has submitted a detailed response to the consultation which you can read by clicking here (you will be downloading a pdf here).

You can show your support by signing up to the Justice for All campaign.  You can do this by going to the Law Centres Federation website

Awareness of Legal Issues and Remedies arising out of problems in Housing or Immigration and Asylum

The senior members of the Housing and Asylum & Immigration teams are available to give presentations to groups in the voluntary and public sector who provide services to client groups experiencing these sort of problems.

As part of our aim of raising awareness of common issues and their remedies we can provide these presentations to help identify when clients ought to get legal advice and how this advice could be of help to them.

If you are involved in the voluntary or public sector and would like more information about this please contact us providing some details about your organisation, the work it does and what you are looking for, and we will do our best to assist you.