Merseyside Law Centre are pleased to have been chosen as one of the legal advice centres to work on the Improving Outcomes Through Legal Support (IOTLS) programme managed by Access to Justice and financed by the MOJ.
The funding programme aims to sustain and improve access to early social welfare legal support and advice and enable users to resolve these problems as early as possible and avoid the need for court or tribunal proceedings where possible.
Where court or tribunal proceedings are needed, clients will be supported to help them navigate the process effectively, including support at court where required.
There will be an extensive monitoring exercise to discover outcomes throughout the 21 months of the programme.
Clearly this is no solution to LASPO, but we see it as a way we can help a group of people who have been classed as ‘the working poor’. With the stagnation of Legal Aid rates over many years, these clients have unfortunately found themselves unable to get Legal Aid, but also unable to afford commercial legal assistance which is understandably more costly.