‘Right to rent’ ruling The government’s controversial ‘Right to Rent’ scheme was causing racial discrimination and violating human rights laws, the High Court has found – according to a report in the Independent this morning. The law, which requires private landlords to check the immigration status of potential tenants, was found to violate the European Convention
Chris Grayling’s 2013 probation reforms were ‘set up to fail’ and the number of offenders returned to prison had ‘skyrocketed’, a watchdog has warned. According to a scathing new report by the National Audit Office (NAO) into the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, the restructuring of probation services had failed to hit the Ministry of Justice’s own targets
Farewell to Steve Steve Hynes is leaving LAG at the end of the month after 11 years as its director. Carol Storer, the former director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, has been appointed as interim director. ‘Steve played a leading role in campaigning against the cuts introduced by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment
Child poverty in Britain will rise to record levels within the next five years with an extra 1 million children in poverty, claims a thinktank. This article first appeared on the Justice Gap here. According to the Resolution Foundation in its annual Living Standards Outlook, three out of ten children (30%) lived in relative poverty
The inevitable disappointment The long awaited LASPO review was finally published at the end of last week. ‘Not that anyone in the demoralised world of legal aid was actually looking forward to a report that the government was expected (but failed) to deliver within five years of the 2013 cuts coming in,’ I wrote in the New
“I’ll stop when I can’t go any longer,” says 84 year old Robert Ludbrook when I meet him for a coffee in Wellington’s Island Bay. “The idea of retirement doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t want to play bowls; I don’t want to play golf,” he adds. Mary-Rachel McCabe meets the founder of YouthLaw Aotearoa, New
The long awaited government review of the 2013 legal aid cuts was finally published yesterday. According to the Ministry of Justice, the reforms introduced under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) were to ‘take the legal aid system back to its initial intention – to ensure public funding would remain
Pamela Lalbachan swapped a career in the arts and broadcasting for social welfare law. She is a Justice First Fellow at the South West London Law Centres and will qualify in February 2019. I did a degree in Spanish and Latin American studies, and spent a large part of it studying international relations and developing
Without sufficient resourcing and access to legal aid, changes to the court system could be disastrous for renters, argued Shelter in response to a government consultation on plans for a specialist Housing Court which closed last week. This article first appeared on www.thejusticegap.com The consultation (Considering the case for a Housing Court) followed a call from
Alex Lowry, 25, is a Justice First Fellow at RCJ Advice in central London. She qualified as a solicitor in 2018. The best thing about being a legal aid lawyer is helping people who are in genuine need and seeing the change it makes in their lives. The worst thing is seeing panicked and
