Advice droughts are as damaging & deserve as much attention as advice deserts, says Jon Robins
As NLJ readers know all too well, vast swathes of England and Wales have been reduced to legal advice deserts. Earlier this year Chancery Lane warned that over half of all local authority areas had either one or no housing legal aid provider.
How helpful is it to talk of ‘advice deserts’? The phrase is misleading. It suggests that people lucky enough to live outside of advice deserts can find advice or representation. Obviously, that’s not true. Even if someone manages to find a living, breathing legal aid lawyer they have to be eligible and their legal problem has to fall within what remains of the post-LASPO legal aid scheme.
But that’s not the end of the story. Last month Dr Jo Wilding, a barrister based at Garden Court Chambers, published her research into the dysfunctional and failing ‘market’ of publicly-funded legal advice in immigration and asylum advice (‘Droughts and Deserts: A
