Ms Rebecca Keatinge:

We are similar to CLM in that we do much community education work. We do formal training on housing law, for which there is a great demand. We get many community groups and NGOs that are exclusively working in the housing space attending that education process, which empowers them to support their clients without having to go the classic route of meeting a solicitor. We often find they are not aware of the information we give, so there is a need to educate people on fair procedures in dealing with local authorities, for example. That touches on the constitutional rights issue.

We are often asked to go to an organisation and do a housing rights session. We like to be able to do it but often this comes back to resources for us. We are a small law centre with three solicitors and three administrative staff. We will do this insofar as we can as we see the real value in it. Ultimately, advising on individual cases goes some way but we also need to do community education to disseminate information as broadly as possible to have the maximum impact.