Working on the front line of legal aid for the homeless and badly housed, the team of lawyers at Shelter tell Jonathan Rayner that ‘making a difference’ is their biggest reward




Shelter does not mince its words. Bad housing wrecks lives, the homelessness charity says, and robs 1.6 million British children of their health, education and a fair chance in life.



The figures are sobering – or, some would say, shaming. According to the charity, Britain is now building one-fifth as many new social rented homes as it did in 1966 – the year that ‘Cathy Come Home’ was first screened and inspired the founding of Shelter. What is more, the problem is getting worse. Housing lawyers are deserting legal aid work in droves, house prices are soaring and the stock of affordable rentable accommodation is shrinking rapidly.



And yet morale is high among Shelter’s legal services team of around 20 solicitors. Legal services manager Carol Storer says the mixture of work allows individuals to follow their preferences far more than would be possible in private practice. She gives the example of team members taking turns staffing a specialist telephone helpline. This is a dedicated line exclusively for housing aid centres and Legal Services Commission general civil contract holders seeking help with the more difficult cases.



Ms Storer says: ‘The enquiries can be obscure – the sort of esoteric point of law that you would never meet in private practice. These cases sometimes become test cases which the team takes to higher courts.



‘The team also provides training to other housing law professionals and feeds into policy issues. And then there’s court duty, where you attend court to advise and represent people who are facing eviction and don’t have anyone acting on their behalf. Even if you’re newly qualified, you quickly get lots of advocacy experience.’



The team comprises the full spectrum of practitioners, ranging from trainees to one with 30-plus years’ post-qualification experience. Wendy Anderson has just left the former end, having completed her training contract with Shelter in early February 2007.



Her experience immediately upon qualification perhaps foreshadows the insecure future of legal aid in this country. She was offered a position by two firms, one of which warned her that, with the uncertainty over contracts and remuneration, it could not guarantee that it would still be undertaking legal aid work when she joined in March.



But Ms Anderson remains unabashed and still enthusiastic for a career path that, in her eyes, allows her to make a real difference to people’s lives. Illustrating the point, she describes a recent ‘typical client’ – a disabled and clinically depressed non-English speaking Vietnamese woman who was housebound and isolated from the community. Ms Anderson says: ‘She had rent arrears and so couldn’t move to a more disability friendly house. We discovered that she was owed housing benefits – the late or non-payment of housing benefit is very often at the root of the problem. The extra funds broke the deadlock and she was able to move.’



She adds: ‘That’s exactly why you do this work – something small that has an impact on people’s lives.’



Ms Anderson is less bullish about her most memorable case while working at Shelter. This concerned a woman from Sierra Leone who was a failed asylum seeker and was dying of cancer. Ms Anderson persuaded the local authority to accept responsibility for her client after an immigration solicitor had arranged for her to stay in the UK on compassionate grounds. All that remained was for the Home Office to agree to the dying woman getting the appropriate benefits, such as decent food and accommodation, and proper nursing care.



Ms Anderson says: ‘The Home Office eventually relented, but when I tried to call my client, I discovered she’d died the week before. I felt ashamed on behalf of my country – that poor woman’s last six months of life were miserable.’



John Gallagher qualified in 1976, has worked at Shelter since 1995 and is now principal solicitor on the legal services team. He describes himself as a ‘dinosaur from a gentler age when one could give a client as much time as was needed’, but he underplays his contribution. He takes the lead on the strategic development of casework and works closely with the policy department. He also recently co-wrote the textbook Defending Possession Proceedings.



Like so many practitioners in the publicly funded and not-for-profit sectors, he is concerned for the future. He says: ‘Legal aid is an ageing profession and it is to the great credit of a younger person like Wendy Anderson that she enters the sector and is willing to accept the lower pay.



‘The work itself is intellectually and emotionally rewarding, but that younger person will be battling against the odds both to find work and to survive within a firm.’



Mr Gallagher says that much of the legal team’s work involves taking local authorities to task for following policy by rote and not allowing for individuals’ particular circumstances. He adds: ‘But that’s not to say that we are unsympathetic or hostile to local authorities. We recognise the demands made upon them and are appreciative of good practice, but are convinced of the need to challenge bad practice wherever it exists.’



Rita Parmar has practised housing law with Shelter since 1997 – qualifying as a solicitor in 2000 – having left the private sector because there she was ‘just a money-maker, churning out cases. Unlike here, there was no time for caring or doing that little bit extra which makes all the difference’.



The idea of making a difference is often heard from lawyers working for organisations such as Shelter. Is this too saintly to be true? How exactly do individual team members spend their working day – or more specifically, what did Ms Parmar, for instance, achieve for the common good the previous day?



The morning before, she says, she and a London housing aid centre she had been advising achieved success with a case concerning a homeless woman fleeing domestic violence. ‘She’d been refused accommodation on the grounds she already had somewhere to live – the home she’d shared with her violent partner. This was clearly unacceptable. And so we contacted the local authority and put the woman’s case. A reviewing officer revisited the woman’s application, overturning the decision of the original housing officer and granting temporary accommodation. It was a case of another vulnerable person receiving help when it was desperately needed.’



Ms Parmar spent the afternoon as one of two lawyers staffing the specialist support advice line. She says two issues stood out. One involved the recently widowed wife of a farm worker who had lived in her cottage for 56 years and had been given notice to vacate it. She had lived rent-free throughout this period, but Ms Parmar’s research revealed that under agricultural law there was no requirement to pay rent to secure a protected tenancy. But there were further complications to come.



Ms Parmar says: ‘There was no hot water or heating in the cottage and the landlord refused to repair it. There was little we could do to force him because the legislation governing disrepair in tenancy agreements only dates back to October 1961 – and the widow had been there since 1950.



‘We’re trying to negotiate a solution by having the widow begin to pay rent. That should keep everyone happy, with the landlord receiving a regular income and the tenant getting the repairs done in return.’



The second issue concerned a possible test case that might go as far as the House of Lords. The client had been accepted as homeless, but only given an assured shorthold tenancy by the housing association. This means she will have to go through the whole homeless appeal process again in just three or four years time.



Ms Parmar explains: ‘In the meantime, because she now has accommodation – even if it is short term – she is no longer deemed homeless and so won’t get preference next time around. It all helps improve the council’s homeless figures and it’ll be exciting for us if we have to build a test case outlawing what the council has done, but it’s not good for the client. It’s very stressful and should be resolved as quickly as possible.’



Shelter provides practical advice and support to more than 170,000 homeless or badly housed people every year. The members of the legal services team are frequently the last line of defence, representing often depressed and stressed individuals in court who are under threat of eviction. The team often genuinely does, in Rita Parmar’s words, ‘make all the difference’.



LINK: www.shelter.org.uk for more information about Shelter’s legal work