In April the Home Office Legal Aid budget will be slashed by £350 million as part of the government’s general push to put the poor in their place. Speaking to a housing specialist lawyer, it seems that the cuts to housing Legal Aid is a rogue landlord’s wet dream.
Last year I investigated a well known Dorset landlord for a national newspaper. He isn’t the only pisspoor landlord in Dorset – just a big one – so there is no need to name him here.
Let us revisit what I saw when I spent a day wandering the streets of a major town in Dorset:
In [that area of Dorset, he] has managed to be both well known for his terrible housing for the last 30 years and not been forced by the Council to fix the problems. I went on a tour of his homes last week and visited a block of bedsits where tenants told me that there had been no heating in the building for 12 years. It took one tenant 9 years to persuade the landlord to fix the water supply. Water is in abundance in the building – it seeps through the roof and down the walls, but unfortunately you cannot drink or wash with water that comes through the plasterboard.
Under Legal Aid, until May the tenants could have sued the backside off the man if they didn’t fear immediate illegal eviction. Anne Whitworth, a housing specialist lawyer of the Gloucester Law Centre was speaking to me for an article for another title last week about cuts to advocacy services. She explained “under the new rules, you will only be able to get legal support if the standard of housing is of immediate risk to health”.
The homes described above would be of “immediate risk to health” with regard central heating – one man told me he knew if it was cold outside in the morning as there would be frost on his mobile phone in his room. I however know a property which is of pisspoor standard. Mould blooms every spring, causing respiratory problems for the tenants. A shower tap, costing £50 to replace, drips constantly. The tenants of this property don’t qualify for Legal Aid due to previous cuts – they are on a very low income but earn too much to get lawyers in! This is the sort of private rental that someone on means tested benefits would live in, who is probably disabled and therefore vulnerable. If he had a respiratory problem in the first place? The mould could kill him, and Legal Aid may deem it of “immediate risk to health”. After April for someone who hasn’t respiratory problems? They would not qualify for Legal Aid.
Whitworth says “you will no longer be able to get Legal Aid for benefits advice”. She recognises however that she will be able to support eviction proceedings but any benefits advice had to be given for free. This is a minefield – even as a social affairs journalist I got a kicking last year by the HB office in Weymouth because of their impenetrable language and terrible communication. I got done for £160 a month for 4 months purely due to communications issues, predominantly from them.
With the economy on its knees, people are losing their jobs. Many losing their jobs won’t have taken benefits before, yet be eligible for things like Housing Benefit. Rent arrears – no benefits advice – eviction?
Whitworth explains “previously we could have done preventative work and people wouldn’t have got to the point where they faced eviction in the first place”. She will now be able to step in during eviction proceedings to defend the tenant at the last throws of his battle to retain a roof over his head.
She points out that Legal Aid will no longer cover mortgage repossessions! These are the proudest people of all – people who had a steady job and had money in the bank that wasn’t generally given by a rich Daddy or is a home he inherited, as multiple generations have at Charborough Hall.
Whitworth says that overall “the new rules raise the bar against tenants.” She feels that the incidental costs of homelessness will actually cost more in future than the short sighted cost savings made to the Legal Aid budget.
In dealing with local government and the civil service over the years I call this “Budgetary Siloing”. This basically means “it isn’t my budget so I don’t care”. As long as the Home Office saves £350 million a year it doesn’t care that the Department for Communities and Local Government budget for housing homeless children and families will mushroom, the Department of Health will have to pick up incidental costs around homelessness induced poor health (never mind health problems associated with poor housing) and so forth. Desperate people commit crime – perhaps this will come home to roost with their criminal Legal Aid budget mushrooming!
In such work you have to get a response from those you criticise directly. A spokesperson from the Home Office, said”Legal Aid is a fundamental part of our legal system but resources aren’t limitless – it is funded by taxpayers and should be reserved for cases where there is genuine need, such as for those facing eviction, repossession and homelessness. We fund a number of organisations that can advise on other housing disputes.”
One wonders which organisations? Shelter is the main port of call in such situations. They’re closing many local offices, despite a massive increase in calls for support!
Richard Shrubb
