Housing and Access to Legal Aid

Debate between Ellie Reeves and Ruth Cadbury

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The cuts to local authorities and other parts of the public sector have affected the voluntary sector, which has so often been the alternative provider of professional, consistent, good-quality advice and support to people who need it.

There is currently no law centre in my area. When I was a lead member on Hounslow Council in 2010, we increased the funding for the citizens advice bureau, but demand for the local CAB escalated well beyond that. The philanthropic centres and foundations—the Big Lottery Fund and so on—are often left to pick up the pieces, but pressures on their funding are getting greater. Overall, less good-quality professional help and advice is available in the sector, and I urge the Government to address that as part of their review, which I will move on to in a moment.

As I was saying, MPs and councillors are not professional legal advisers. At best we should signpost and provide basic advice, but we do not have the capacity or skills to provide the detailed advice that people need, even at the early stages of problems arising. I will give a couple of examples that Vicky Fewkes of the Ealing law centre provided me with. They concern people who much of the time were not eligible for housing legal aid. In all cases, the welfare and benefits work that was done was under grant funding, not legal aid.

First, a constituent was in substantial rent arrears due to universal credit issues. Her tenancy was jointly in her name and that of her partner. However, she had been abused by her partner, which led to their separating and her partner moving out. Universal credit would not pay her full rent due to the tenancy being in both names. She was given time to transfer the tenancy into her name and resolve the universal credit issues. The adviser worked with her and managed to resolve the matter, and to retrieve about £5,000 in universal credit housing payments. She kept her home—at substantial cost to the public sector, of course. That case was not funded through legal aid, but I believe it should have been.

In another example, a constituent was in arrears of more than £2,500 following the stoppage of her employment and support allowance and housing benefit. She had four children, aged between 11 and 19, and she suffered from depression, anxiety and physical problems. Her housing benefit had been cancelled due to the required information not being supplied. The caseworker worked with her and her husband to claim backdated housing benefit. The caseworker liaised with the council and worked with the husband to answer all the council’s questions and provide the required evidence. The hearings were adjourned until the ESA and housing benefit issues could be resolved. The ESA decision was appealed and overturned, meaning that she eventually got a backdated ESA payment and £4,000 in housing benefit being paid into her rent account, meaning that she kept her home. She was a council tenant. If she had been a private sector tenant, that landlord would not have waited for her income situation to be resolved.

Vicky says of the crisis navigator role at the Ealing law centre:

“The Crisis Navigator is part of a Big Lottery funded Help through Crisis Project. This work is essential and is not being funded by Legal Aid as it stands at the moment. A lot of problems arise from insecure work (variable hours/zero contracts). These then impact benefits and rent arrears as a result. If clients are evicted if they are housed by local authorities, then the temp accommodation rent is so high and Housing Benefit is being paid for this.”

In my area, west London, housing benefit caps are well below the rent even for poor-quality private sector housing. Finally, Vicky says:

“It really would make sense to provide benefits support at an early stage.”

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which I will refer to as LASPO, made fundamental changes to eligibility for legal aid. Under LASPO, applicants must pass three basic tests. The case must be within the scope of the legal aid scheme; there is a financial means test to pass; and there is a merits test, looking at the applicant’s chance of success in the case and a cost-benefit analysis of providing legal aid funding. Matters that are included in the scope of legal aid are homelessness; allocations; accommodation for asylum seekers; repossession of a rented home, but only when the loss of the home is imminent and the landlord has sought an order for possession; lawful and unlawful eviction from the home; injunctions relating to harassment; antisocial behaviour cases in the county court; disrepair, but only when there is a serious risk of harm to the health or safety of the occupiers; and judicial review. Areas that are no longer eligible for legal aid under LASPO are rent and mortgage arrears that may ultimately result in possession proceedings; early stage disputes between landlords and tenants—

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned early legal advice. Of course, one recommendation from the Bach commission is that early legal advice can help to save money in the long run. The Law Society estimates that the cost of early legal advice on housing benefit claims would be £1.7 million to £2 million each year, but the costs through avoidable evictions are often far greater for individuals, councils and the NHS. Will—

[Ellie Reeves]

Does my hon. Friend agree that reintroducing early legal advice would help to solve the housing crisis?

[Ruth Cadbury]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend anticipates what I will come on to in a minute.

Not only are early-stage disputes between landlords and tenants no longer eligible for legal aid, but housing benefit advice is no longer eligible. That is particularly worrying because of the many changes to the benefits system, to which I have referred. As I said, when people transfer to universal credit, there is no payment for up to five weeks. That is a lot of money and a lot of heartache, particularly for tenants in the private sector whose landlords are not prepared to wait until things are resolved. However, the situation is worrying even for housing association or council tenants. I try to reassure them by saying, “Don’t worry. The council will not evict you on this basis.” However, it is still stress and worry that people do not need, and many people go and borrow money, which they can ill afford to repay, from friends, relatives and payday lenders. It causes massive problems.

Since LASPO was introduced in 2012-13, there has been a 58% fall in legal help for housing cases in England and Wales; the number has gone from just over 85,000 per annum to just over 35,500 per annum. As we have mentioned, LASPO has caused a critical decline in the number of housing legal aid providers, from 646 in the year before LASPO to 427. The Law Society found in July 2016 that one third of legal aid areas have just one solicitor providing specialised housing advice through legal aid. Areas such as Surrey, Shropshire and Suffolk had no legal aid provider specialising in housing. That is shocking.

A review of LASPO in respect of legal aid for housing advice and aid is urgently needed, but I want to focus now on the area raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves)—early legal advice. Without early legal advice, a problem can escalate, which costs the tenant stress and possibly the loss of their home. That causes knock-on costs for the public purse, poor health, homelessness and debt. I have met several families in my surgery and in my work as an MP outside the surgery who did not seek early advice. They left their home when the landlord asked them to; they did not wait for the court order, let alone the bailiffs. As a result, they were deemed intentionally homeless, so the housing department was able to discharge its duty to house them. How many people know the ins and outs of housing law sufficiently to know what I know, which is, “Wait until the bailiffs arrive”? Most people want to do the right thing. They are scared by their landlords. They think that they can sofa-surf for a while and sort something out. Reality is not like that, particularly in the very high-cost areas of west London that I represent.

As I said, if people are deemed intentionally homeless, the housing department is able to discharge its duty to house them. If they have children, then under the Children Act 1989 social services, quite rightly, have to find them a home. That is yet more work and costs for already overstretched social workers, who are not housing specialists, and it means that social services are competing for the small amount of private sector accommodation from which the housing department is seeking temporary accommodation. And there are all those people who come to live and work in London, who are also looking for accommodation.

Under LASPO, legal advice is not available for disrepair until it affects the tenant’s health, or for possible eviction unless a possession notice has been granted. In November 2017, the Law Society called for legal aid to be reintroduced for early advice in respect of family and housing law, saying:

“Everyone knows that if you catch a problem early, you’re more likely to stop it getting worse.”

The Law Society research showed that, on average, one in four people who received early professional legal advice had resolved their problem within three to four months, but for those who did not get any legal advice, it was not until nine months after the issue first occurred that one in four had resolved their issue, and those getting no early advice were 20% less likely on average to have their problem resolved.

The Law Society, in making its report, was not angling for more work for its members—in fact, probably the opposite, as it recognises that legal problems, like so much in life, are easier and cheaper to deal with early on. The Law Society estimates that restoring housing benefit advice to the legal aid system could be done for about £2 million a year. That is based on the cost of pre-LASPO advice in relation to housing benefits. It also suggests that restoration of early advice on mortgage arrears, which is now outside the legal aid remit, could prevent escalation of arrears and further costs of possession proceedings and, by the way, reduce some of the additional costs arising from legal aid cuts.

I am really pleased that in April, the Labour party announced its new policy to restore legal advice in all housing cases. That came from one of the recommendations of the justice commission chaired by Lord Bach, which was established by my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) when he became leader of the Labour party; it was one of the first things he did in that role. The Bach report estimates that restoring legal advice funded by legal aid could help up to 50,000 households a year to enforce their housing rights.

By responding to Labour’s announcement and starting to provide funding for early professional legal advice for housing matters, the Government would really be making a difference to many people in our constituencies. That would almost certainly mean a lower volume of cases going to court, as they could be resolved earlier. Wider benefits and savings would include avoiding health issues caused by significant disrepair; not having to pay housing benefit for high-cost temporary housing; fewer people becoming homeless; and fewer leaving rent arrears and mortgage debts unaddressed.

Everyone should have the right to a safe and decent home, so I ask the Government to take the opportunity presented by the review of LASPO announced last October to recommend returning to the legal aid scheme the ability to obtain legal advice for housing matters, and to have a fundamental review of legal aid as it applies to housing issues. I look hopefully at the answer that the Minister gave my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on 23 January this year on this very issue.