Justice for all

Sixty years ago, a right enshrined in the Magna Carta finally became a practical possibility: justice for all. The Legal Aid and Legal Advice Act 1949 handed people the right to state-sponsored legal help for the first time, if they could not pay themselves. Since then, however, the legal aid bill in England and Wales has soared to £2 billion a year. Reforms have been introduced to try to keep costs in check - and these may hit housing cases, which account for more than a quarter of the legal aid budget.

As its 60th anniversary year draws to a close, legal aid has clearly been a success for justice in housing cases. But, with recent changes to the way it is handed out, the legacy of the next 10 years may be very different.

Housing issues have featured in many landmark cases fought by lawyers paid for with legal aid since the process’s creation. In 1968, an inquest into the Ronan Point disaster, in which four people were killed when a tower block collapsed in Newham, east London, was funded by legal aid.

The case led to a shake-up of building regulations in 1970.

During the 1970s, legal aid helped tenants seek justice against exploitative landlords, such as the notorious Peter Rachman.

Essential service

Legal aid has helped to prevent eviction during the current recession. In 2008/09 34,000 people were given advice on how to avoid housing repossession in a legal aid-funded scheme. More than three-quarters of those were able to stay in their homes.

Even so, paying top barristers to take public bodies to court with public cash has its critics. Today’s annual legal aid budget of £2 billion is a huge increase from the average yearly spend of £1 million in the 1950s. Social landlords aren’t always fans of they system and the Social Housing Law Association, an umbrella group for lawyers who act for them, says that the legal aid regime can be an unnecessary drain on their clients’ resources. ‘The SHLA is particularly concerned that the use of public money to bring and defend weak cases causes social landlords to spend more on legal proceedings than they should have to,’ the association has said.

The association’s lawyers hope that a shake-up of the legal aid regime, initiated by the Legal Services Commission in 2004/05 and still being rolled out, will prevent ‘weaker cases’ reaching the courts. The commission took over control of the legal aid budget in England and Wales when it replaced the Legal Aid Board in 2000. Its reforms are radically changing the way legal aid and legal advice is paid for.

Under the previous regime, organisations qualified for government funding even when they provided advice in only one area, such as housing. Since the reforms, they must offer help for a range of problems such as debt, domestic violence and welfare benefits. This leaves niche organisations with the option of expanding their expertise or bidding jointly for legal aid contracts with other organisations.

Legal aid is also now paid using a fixed-fee system - based on the average cost of a typical case - rather than the previous hourly rate system.
Phil Jew, head of policy and campaigns at Advice UK, which represents around 1,500 advice centres throughout England, Scotland and Wales, fears the reforms will lead to an ‘industrialisation’ of housing advice. ‘People are not spending as long with clients because they have to work within the fixed fee,’ he says. ‘They close cases even when satisfaction is not achieved.’ The fixed-fee system forces advice staff to pick easier cases which take less time to deal with, he adds.

Staying within budget

The 426 Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales are also having to change. The first 200 were set up in 1939 to help people with their war time worries - a decade ahead of legal aid’s introduction. They were not, however, significant recipients of legal aid until 15 years ago, when the Legal Aid Board started funding them to provide specialist advice.

Vicky Ling, a community legal services consultant at Citizens Advice, the bureau’s umbrella body, says the reforms will mean more of its members offering housing advice. ‘A lot of bureaux are now working out how they can offer housing advice or work with partners like Shelter or law centres or [local authorities],’ she says.

The Legal Services Commission says the reforms are needed because it has a fixed annual budget of £2 billion. ‘We recognised that some legally aided cases, even at the initial level of advice, are more difficult than others,’ he added. ‘Exceptional cases… will be paid on hourly rates.’ The commission has also introduced some very modern methods to improve access to justice - such as offering advice by email or by sign language via a webcam.

Tenants are worried the reforms will block their access to justice. Carole Swords, a tenant who fought and lost a High Court case to prevent the transfer of the Parkside estate to Old Ford Housing Association from Tower Hamlets Council, said legal aid had been essential for the battle. Although leaseholders contributed 20 per cent of the costs, the remaining 80 per cent was provide by legal aid. ‘If only the rich can [fight] injustices then that is an injustice in itself,’ she says. ‘The poor and the working classes shouldn’t have to put up with injustices because they don’t have a route to go down.’

Landlords may not always like legal aid - but it keeps standards in social housing high. The need to preserve the 60-year old right was last year summed up in a judgement by Lord Justice Sedley.

‘[Southwark] law centre, by careful and well-informed correspondence, was able to locate and challenge the precise error of public administration which this appeal has confirmed,’ he said. ‘It is of importance to the administration of justice, as well as to many individuals, that there should continue to be law centres like Southwark’s which are able to offer professional help of high calibre to the neediest people.’

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