More than seven million people do not have enough money coming in each month to safely cover essential living costs - let alone to pay for legal advice - a conference on 'reshaping legal services' organised by the Legal Services Board heard today.

Over half of people who approached Citizens Advice in 2023 for debt advice were in a ‘negative budget’, Dame Clare Moriarty, chief executive of the advice group said in a keynote address. 

The conference heard of a single mother working overtime earning £1,400 a month - and paying £1,000 a month in rent for social housing. The mother was struggling to pay arrears under a suspended possession order and potentially faces enforcement action. ‘You can see how quickly people’s situation gets out of kilter,’ Moriarty said.

The mother’s situation was one example of how the structural problem of negative budgets can devastate lives and add pressure to a legal system ‘already bursting at the seams’, Moriarty said.

Dame Clare Moriarty

Moriarty says advice organisations are struggling to meet rising demand for help

While Citizens Advice gives one-to-one advice to 2.5 million people every year, Moriarty said demand is rising and it is getting harder every year to meet that demand. Last year, the ‘how to get free legal advice’ page of the Citizens Advice website received over 200,000 views.

‘If I could ask one thing,’ Moriarty told the audience, which included legal professionals, representative bodies and regulators, ‘go back to your communities and if you’re not already in conversation with your local Citizens Advice, start one now’. 

Moriarty concluded her address by highlighting the importance of seeing people’s problems in the round and taking a holistic approach, pointing out that people’s relationship problem can become a money problem, then a debt problem, then a housing problem, then a homelessness problem.

During questions, a litigant in person asked Moriarty how Citizens Advice responded to the government's legal aid reforms.

Moriarty replied that the amount of funding available for advice services has been squeezed over the years. Early legal advice can make such a difference to a person's life and is cost effective, but is 'deeply underfunded across the whole sector', Moriarty said.

 

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