Post by Patrick Torsney on Feb 1, 2011 12:25:29 GMT 1
Here is another example of how a small amount of legal aid funded work at an early stage can help avoid costly legal proceedings further on down the line
In the story of Ms H below, a client who attended Gloucester Law Centre recently, early legal intervention prevented costly possession proceedings being commenced and increased spend of legal aid monies
Under the current reform proposals, intervention like this will no longer be funded. However, the Government says it will keep legal aid for defending possession proceedings. Effectively, it is proposing to get rid of work that is cost effective to the tax payer and parties involved, and retain only the most expensive aspect, that of defending formal court proceedings further on down the line
Ms H who is disabled and unable to work through ill-health and also has a disabled child. She came to the law centre because she was struggling financially and was being threatened with possession action because of rent arrears
We checked Ms H’s housing benefit entitlement and discovered that she had been significantly underpaid since her child had been awarded Disability Living Allowance the previous year. She had notified the housing benefit section of this but they had in error failed to increase her housing benefit by including a Disabled Child Premium to which she had become entitled
Ms H had no idea that she was entitled to this additional payment and had assumed that the local authority had acted on the information she had provided and assessed her benefit correctly
After we took this up with the local authority an arrears payment of approximately £2000 was made, which not only cleared her arrears but put her rent account into credit
Our early intervention at a cost of only £174 (the fixed fee that can be claimed for Housing cases such as this) therefore avoided the need for expensive court action and the possible expenditure of much larger amounts of legal aid on a certificate to defend the possession proceedings at a later stage had the problem not been resolved so soon
In the story of Ms H below, a client who attended Gloucester Law Centre recently, early legal intervention prevented costly possession proceedings being commenced and increased spend of legal aid monies
Under the current reform proposals, intervention like this will no longer be funded. However, the Government says it will keep legal aid for defending possession proceedings. Effectively, it is proposing to get rid of work that is cost effective to the tax payer and parties involved, and retain only the most expensive aspect, that of defending formal court proceedings further on down the line
Ms H who is disabled and unable to work through ill-health and also has a disabled child. She came to the law centre because she was struggling financially and was being threatened with possession action because of rent arrears
We checked Ms H’s housing benefit entitlement and discovered that she had been significantly underpaid since her child had been awarded Disability Living Allowance the previous year. She had notified the housing benefit section of this but they had in error failed to increase her housing benefit by including a Disabled Child Premium to which she had become entitled
Ms H had no idea that she was entitled to this additional payment and had assumed that the local authority had acted on the information she had provided and assessed her benefit correctly
After we took this up with the local authority an arrears payment of approximately £2000 was made, which not only cleared her arrears but put her rent account into credit
Our early intervention at a cost of only £174 (the fixed fee that can be claimed for Housing cases such as this) therefore avoided the need for expensive court action and the possible expenditure of much larger amounts of legal aid on a certificate to defend the possession proceedings at a later stage had the problem not been resolved so soon