Half of local authority areas have no publicly funded housing legal advice provider: Law Society

More than half of local authority areas in England and Wales – covering nearly 22 million people – do not have a housing legal aid provider, Law Society research has suggested.

Chancery Lane said its analysis of legal aid providers in England and Wales, combined with Office of National Statistics population data, had also found that:

• over a third (37%) of the population live in local authorities which do not have a single housing legal aid provider;
• 59% of the population live in local authorities which have one or no housing legal aid providers;
• over three quarters of all local authority areas in England and Wales - covering 35 million people - have just one or no housing legal aid providers.

Warning of “catastrophic ‘legal aid deserts’ across the country”, the Law Society noted that whole counties – such as Suffolk – are without any housing legal aid. In Cornwall, one law firm serves a population of more than half a million spread over 1,300 square miles, it said.

Law Society president Christina Blacklaws said: “People facing homelessness or trying to challenge a rogue landlord increasingly can’t get the expert legal advice they desperately need.

“More than 21 million people live in a local authority without a single housing legal aid service, leaving pensioners, families with young children, people with disabilities or on low incomes struggling to access the legal advice they are entitled to when they are at their most vulnerable.

“Anyone trying to resolve a serious housing problem is likely to need face-to-face professional advice urgently - if the nearest legal aid solicitor is in the next county they might as well be on Mars.”

Chancery Lane argued that having just one housing legal aid provider in a large area can result in a range of problems, namely that:

• Anyone on an income low enough to qualify for legal aid, “let alone in rent arrears”, is unlikely to be able to afford to travel a great distance to see a solicitor.
• Working people, families and anyone with dependants may have serious logistical challenges if they have to travel across a county to find a provider, particularly in rural areas with patchy public transport.
• One firm covering a large area may not have capacity to provide advice to all those who need it.
• A single provider may have to decline clients due to a conflict of interest, because one law firm cannot represent both a tenant and their landlord.
• A conflict can also arise if the firm has been acting for the landlord on another issue, such as a family matter. This would mean the firm would not be able to act for the tenant.

The Law Society, which has published an interactive map of housing advice coverage, added that the fees the Government pays for legal aid provision had not increased since 1998-99, equating to a 41% real-terms reduction. “On top of this, fees were cut by a further 10% in 2011.”

Blacklaws added: “There is no longer legal aid for early advice, meaning many people can only get help when their situation is critical.

“The only housing issues still in scope are homelessness, harassment, eviction due to rent arrears and disrepair that is so bad it is hazardous to occupants’ health.

“The government must ensure everyone who has a right to state-funded legal advice can actually get it when they so desperately need it. Legal rights are meaningless if people can’t enforce them.”

The Law Society has prepared a briefing for Parliament on the issue. This can be viewed here.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “It is misleading to compare legal aid services to local authority areas as that is not how provision is set – people can be covered by nearby providers or over the telephone if they are unable to travel.

“There are more offices offering housing advice services now than under the previous contract and we are launching a series of pilots offering support to people with social welfare problems like housing, including expansion of early legal advice.”

The MoJ said the pilots would test the impact of early legal advice and use the evidence to inform its future consideration of early intervention. It also pointed to recently-announced government plans to end ‘no-fault evictions’.

The Ministry accepted that certain local authorities did not have any providers that had claims billed in the periods shown. However, it argued that that did not mean that the population of a certain area has no access to legal aid.