A huge rent increase sought by a London local authority could have devastating consequences for a legal advice service and the community it serves, a solicitor volunteer has warned.
Waterloo Action Centre (WAC) has served as a community hub, offering a wide range of services including Waterloo Legal Advice Service, since 1973. However, a row has erupted between WAC and Lambeth council over its peppercorn £8 annual rent.
The centre, whose application for a £6,000 grant to maintain IT support was recently ‘paused’, is ineligible for further public cash until it signs a new lease. WAC says the council wants to increase the rent in what is now a greatly gentrified area to £45,000.
Solicitor Rosalind Connor, an advice service volunteer for 25 years, told the Gazette that making WAC pay market rent could spell the end of the community hub - and potentially the advice service. Were it not for the support the advice service currently receives from two law firms, particularly Jones Day, ‘we would not be operating today'. The advice service has tried to get support from more firms 'but we have got nowhere'.
Helping people in person is important, Connor said, especially as volunteers are increasingly correcting 'legal misinformation' clients come across online. But the advice service ideally needs to be 'in the middle of town' for volunteers as well as clients. 'If we move to somewhere where the rent is low, advisers won’t come. We’re relying on people with busy jobs to pause work, come down and advise people for a couple of hours. If you send them somewhere out of town, they’re not going to do it,’ Connor said.
Lambeth has become a gentrified area over the years but the people the advice service helps are far from wealthy - such as the unemployed mother who bought a cheap cooker that exploded when she switched it on. The shop refused to give her a refund - until the advice service sent a strongly-worded letter.
‘These are people often living in housing association or council properties, they mostly live hand-to-mouth. The thing that’s crushing is... they do not expect the law [to be] on their side because they are so used to losing at every point,' Connor said. 'The things we do are not glamorous but my god it makes a difference to people's lives.'
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