Page 59 - Solving Housing Disputes

early advice and approaches that assist clients with multiple problems, the Action
Plan requires a broader commitment to sustainable funding for the sector.

3.8 Tenant lawyers we spoke to explained that the current funding model for legal aid
practices and the advice sector has damaged the sector. Legal funding for help
delivered prior to court is not funded at a sustainable rate and many law centres
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rely on costs orders in successful housing cases to survive. Problems were
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expected from the introduction of the fixed recoverable costs regime. Most
consultees we spoke to told us that many people facing possession for rent arrears
were suffering from benefits issues, often relating to Universal Credit, and were
often unable to get early advice and assistance with those issues.

3.9 Fundamentally, access to justice problems in housing disputes are in large part
attributable to the collapse of the advice sector brought by LASPO. People simply
cannot access legal advice and assistance for housing disputes or the underlying
problems, such as benefits, that catalyse into housing issues. The diminution in
value in real terms of services rendered and the reduction in local authority
capacity to fund advice has greatly diminished the sector. Piloting holistic
interventions is encouraging, but it is a small concession. What is needed is wide
scale investment in early interventions for people’s legal problems. In particular,
there is an urgent need for the MOJ to reintroduce publicly funded legal services
into advice deserts and to ensure that funding allows providers to address
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“clustered” legal problems. We recommend the Ministry of Justice Legal
Action Plan urgently address the need for sustainable funding for the legal
aid and advice sector. Specific attention should be directed as to how to
respond to legal aid “housing deserts” and the need to provide funding for
advice that addresses “clustered” legal problems.

3.10 We understand that as part of the Action Plan, the MOJ is exploring the prospect
of piloting and evaluating a pre-existing site where legal advice is co-located in
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a health setting. We have been told this piloting might include Digital

141 We were told that for many Law Centres, successful costs orders subsidise other essential case work
and advocacy for vulnerable people which is otherwise a loss leader.

142 See para 3.16 below.

143 Clustering describes a client experiencing interrelated legal problems. For instance, housing, benefits,
debt and relationship breakdowns are commonly associated, Moorhead, R. and Robinson, M. (2006). ‘A
trouble shared – legal problems clusters in solicitors’ and advice agencies’, available at: https://orca-
mwe.cf.ac.uk/5184/1/Moorhead_et_al_2006_A_Trouble_Shared.pdf

144 For example, the UCL Legal Advice Clinic co-locates legal advice in a clinical health setting in
Newham and provides advice across welfare benefits, housing, community care and education law. The
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