A small legal advice charity is taking the government to court after the Legal Aid Agency demanded £35,000 for a case that ended 13 years ago.
The case, which concerned Home Office rules for determining an application for a marriage visa, went to the Supreme Court. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants told the Gazette the LAA failed to provide any documents showing JCWI owed £35,000 in relation to payments on account.
JCWI co-legal director Laura Smith said the first record of contact about the case that she could see was in 2020, when it was raised as a query during a contract manager's visit. The case appeared the following year in a list of 'inactive' cases sent to the JCWI for a status update. JCWI requested the records that the LAA was relying on, but was told the LAA did not hold records for the relevant period.
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Smith said JCWI has shown it does not owe the full amount and believes it owes nothing due to rules around limitation. However, Smith said JCWI was left with no choice but to pay the money in full and that a request to pay in instalments was refused.
‘We would receive no income from the LAA - one of our main sources of income. As our cashflow is very tight, we may well have had to close due to inability to pay salaries. We tried to hold off on payment until the matter could be resolved, resulting in our full monthly submissions being withheld. We therefore had no choice but to agree to pay in order to avoid a cash crisis,' Smith said.
‘We are currently in a very restrained financial position and the loss of £35k is likely to mean loss of a member of staff providing frontline legal support. We are a charity so we don't have any profit that this could be deducted from.'
JCWI has now issued judicial review proceedings. The Ministry of Justice declined to comment.
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