Page 149 - Solving Housing Disputes

market of lawyers specialising in housing, willing and able to take
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instructions on legal aid.

3. I should add that at para.37 of the Dissent, a number of pragmatic and
reasoned proposals for reform of the current system have been advanced.
These are welcomed and a number had been incorporated into the report. To
the extent that there are proposals which were not put before the Working
Party, I expect members would have been willing to incorporate them into the
recommendations for the current system. I would expect that the
implementation phase of this Working Party would see JUSTICE willing to
advocate for those proposals well made by the HLPA members.

4. The commitment of HLPA members to their work is as profound as it is
uncompromising; no one would have it any other way. Moreover, there is no
doubt that they provide a service which protects many vulnerable people. But
HLPA members do not enjoy a monopoly on the representation of tenants and
the homeless acting on legal aid and the vulnerable whom they serve are only
those who reach them which, as we have seen, is far from all of them (see
Report, para 2.23, noting that 52% of local authority areas have no legal aid
housing lawyers and that 49% of legal aid housing lawyers are in London.
See also Report, paras 3.5-3.6).

5. Many of those who are not served by HLPA members are as vulnerable as
those who do find their way to a legal aid lawyer; they are often forgotten. As
a matter of common sense, the most vulnerable are likely to be the least able
to get help. Moreover, we tend to focus on the very poorest who qualify for
legal aid, but we should not institutionalise low income thresholds and sparse
coverage by others.

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6. The vulnerable are at the very core of the HDS concept. It is, as I articulated
it in the two editorials in the Journal of Housing Law in which I initially

of dispute are brought to the surface, including compliance with notice and other contractual and
regulatory requirements” (Report, para.2.10).

342 “It is therefore critical that the HDS does not function to deplete or diminish the corps of publicly
funded expert housing lawyers” Report, (para.2.69).

343 The purpose of housing law itself, as that term is now understood, when it emerged in the mid-1970s,
was to seek for tenants (thus, the vulnerable party) an equal voice to that of landlords, who had been able
to rely on property rights with which the courts were much more familiar, and to which it may be said
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