Your report that a recent survey found that half of the legal aid housing lawyers and advisers are threatening to leave publicly funded work tells only part of the story (see [2007] Gazette, 15 February, 4).


Since the Community Legal Service was introduced six years ago, there has been a sharp decline both in the number of providers with housing contracts and also a fall, in real terms, in the total spend on housing advice provision. The so-called supplier base is already severely depleted.



What is left is a small but highly committed core of housing lawyers and advisers who already had to become as efficient as possible to cope with a six-year pay freeze. When half of those who are left say they are planning to leave, it is not a threat, but a statement of profound despair. The results are going to be catastrophic for those who are homeless or at risk of losing their homes.



The Legal Services Commission (LSC) spokesman suggested that a national fixed fee for all housing work would mean higher average remuneration per case for 66% of housing solicitors. I am not clear how that figure has been calculated, but it may well be the case that those now providing telephone advice through the CLS Direct service may be pleased that they will be paid the same for answering a phone call as I will be paid for spending ten hours on a homelessness review; but I, and many other specialists, cannot survive under such a crude system. So the 34% of housing solicitors and advisers for whom fixed fees will result in a pay cut will be lost overnight.



Neither Lord Carter, nor Department for Constitutional Affairs minister Vera Baird, nor LSC chief executive, Carolyn Regan, have taken on board specialist housing practitioners' concerns about the proposals - and it shows.



Gareth Mitchell, Pierce Glynn Solicitors, London