Hackney Community Law Centre

17/06/2026

Clapton Salvation Army is running a new Debt Advice service at their church in Lower Clapton Road E5 on Thursdays.

Clapton Salvation Army St James Clapton Clapton Pond Neighbourhood Action Group The Salvation Army Mare Street Hackney Council Hackney Community Law Centre

13/06/2026

Every day, across 44 Law Centres in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, people show up for clients that no one else will take on.

They correct Windrush wrongs through the courts, keep the lights on, the files moving, phones answered. They've been doing it - in some cases - for fifty years.

This week, the LALY shortlist reminded us why that work matters.
Four Law Centre nominations feature among the 2026 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year finalists:

🏆 Van Ferguson, Southwark Law Centre - shortlisted for Social Welfare Law, for winning over £780,000 in compensation for Windrush victims and challenging the absence of legal aid for those claims in court.
🏆 Debbie Yates, Southwark Law Centre - shortlisted for Legal Aid Support Staffer, for the kind of essential, often hidden work that holds every Law Centre together.
🏆 Bristol Law Centre and Central England Law Centre - both shortlisted for Legal Aid Firm/Not-for-profit Agency, two organisations with around half a century of service to their communities and no signs of slowing down.

The LALYs celebrate the very best of a sector that rarely celebrates itself. But behind every shortlisted name is a whole team - caseworkers, receptionists, volunteers, supervisors - doing the vital work, day in, day out, without the award nomination.

This is for them too.

Congratulations to all four finalists. Winners announced 3 July. 🎉

Law Centres Network Hackney Labour Hackney South & Shoreditch Labour Party Hackney North and Stoke Newington Labour Party Hackney Migrant Centre Ian Rathbone

13/06/2026

Where to on access to justice?
On Tuesday, parliament’s justice committee grilled minister Sarah Sackman MP and two of her senior officials about the state of access to justice.

The minister claimed that some legal aid providers spend as much as 30%-40% of their time ‘wrestling with our dreadful systems’, saying that MoJ was allocated some £200m until 2029 to move off of its legacy IT systems.

She also blamed the state of the IT for holding up the rollout of the housing and immigration fee increases for certificated work.

On legal aid ‘deserts’, the speakers claimed that the ‘market’ was healthy, despite recently inviting interest from more housing and family providers.

Their approach to having ‘no post code lottery’ in access to legal aid seemed also to rely on a mix of outreach and remote services. The minister admitted that she liked the idea of a National Legal Service, and thought that current work on ‘legal support’ may one day provide a framework for how it may develop.

All three speakers mentioned Law Centres favourably several times in their answers to MPs, including the minister, who regretted not having a Law Centre in her north London constituency. Click here to watch the evidence session.

27/05/2026

My friend Pip Salvador-Jones, who has died aged 61 of gall-bladder cancer, was director of Citizens Advice in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, one of the UK’s most disadvantaged areas.

Having started out at North Lewisham law centre in south-east London as an articled clerk, Pip moved on to Hackney Community law centre, where she worked as a solicitor helping, among others, Travellers, tenants’ associations and disabled people’s organisations.

Later, as chief executive of the Mary Ward legal centre in central London (2005-08), she doubled that organisation’s size and set up a new programme, Young, Free and Legal, to increase access to legal advice for young people.

Her final working spell, from 2010 until her death, was spent at Barking and Dagenham Citizens Advice, where over 15 years she headed initiatives to provide legal aid and advice to people facing evictions, domestic abuse and debt. She also made space in the office car park for a converted bus that served as an LGBTIQ+ homeless shelter ....

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/may/27/pip-salvador-jones-obituary?CMP=share_btn_url

Law Centres Network Hackney Migrant Centre The Guardian Hackney Gazette

Other lives: Legal expert who worked at three London law centres before becoming director of Barking and Dagenham Citizens Advice

16/05/2026

A note from Law Centres Network Director, Julie Bishop:
The dust is beginning to settle on last week's local elections. The headline across much of England - no overall control - tells its own story about where we are as a country: a fractured political landscape, deep voter dissatisfaction, and a genuine uncertainty about what comes next.

What does this mean for us? The results were mixed and, in places, alarming. Where parties with hostile attitudes towards advice services and the communities we serve made some significant gains - the implications for Law Centre clients are real: for housing, for welfare, for the tone of public services and the willingness of local authorities to invest in advice and support. These are not abstract political shifts; they are felt by the people who walk through our doors.

However, the fragmentation reflects the fact that no party has been handed a blank cheque and that creates space - for advocacy, coalition-building, for the kind of practical engagement that some Law Centres have already been pioneering.

It is worth remembering that Law Centres exist because the world is unequal and because people need somewhere to turn. That has been true through every political cycle we have navigated and it remains true now. We know the need for what we do does not diminish in difficult times. It grows.

Julie Bishop
Director, Law Centres Network

16/05/2026

We joined a because we believe something simple: legal support is an act of hope.

When someone walks into a Law Centre feeling powerless and leaves with their rights protected—that's hope, made real.

This week, we're celebrating it. 💛

16/05/2026

Hope looks different depending on who you are.

For a family facing eviction, it's a solicitor who picks up the phone. For someone whose benefits have been stopped, it's an adviser who understands the system. For a worker who's been treated unfairly, it's knowing they don't have to face it alone.

That's what we're part of. That's why we're joining a 💛

16/05/2026

16/05/2026

The Renters’ Rights Act is a significant moment for private renters but whether it becomes a genuinely transformative one will depend on what happens next.

Without , too many renters will be locked out of justice.

More in our newsletter.
👉 https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?u=0460307137424dbae2ed66bdf&id=11e2383168

30/01/2026

A Windrush generation man who arrived in Britain as a child 60 years ago has spent several months homeless and destitute, after officials questioned whether he had the right to live in the UK.

George Campbell, 69, ended up staying in a bus shelter in east London and visiting food banks after he was discharged from a hospital stay last year. Because he had no paperwork proving that he was in the UK legally, council officials classified him as ineligible for state-funded homelessness support.

Although the Home Office’s Windrush team was alerted to the urgency of his situation in early October, it was months before officials accepted that he was living in the UK legally and granted him the proof of immigration status to which he had always been entitled. He remains living in a night shelter, supported by a charity, because his attempts to claim a state pension have also been rejected, despite a lifetime working and paying taxes in Britain.

He is particularly grateful to a council worker called Juanita based in Walthamstow library, who noticed that he was spending all day there. She helped him get food vouchers. “If it wasn’t for her, I would be dead,” he said. Council staff placed him in an emergency shelter for a few weeks in September, but when they found he had no proof of his right to be in the UK, his housing application was closed, according to staff at the Forest Night Shelter, where he has been housed since then. He buttonholed Stella Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow, outside the library in September and explained his situation; she has tried to expedite his case but has been surprised at how long the process has taken.

“The Home Office knew it was urgent. It shouldn’t have taken so long,” said Creasy. While similar Windrush cases have largely tailed off in her constituency, she said she was concerned about a series of upcoming changes to the immigration system that could push new groups of people into immigration limbo.

“When we still have cases like this where uncertain immigration status means that people are completely abandoned by public services and reliant on the voluntary sector and night shelters, maybe we should take pause in any structural changes to our immigration system. None of us want another Windrush.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/26/im-part-of-this-country-windrush-man-left-homeless-by-home-office-inaction

Hackney Migrant Centre Hackney Labour Hackney Council Hackney South & Shoreditch Labour Party Stella Creasy Hackney Night Shelter

George Campbell, 69, slept in bus station as officials questioned his right to live in the UK after hospital stay