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Funder: Legal Education Foundation & Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Awarded: £26,350
Duration: 2018
Staff involved: Gráinne McKeever, Mark Simpson and Ciara Fitzpatrick

This report was jointly commissioned by The Legal Education Foundation and The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) to explore to explore legal dimensions to destitution.

The research provides a legally grounded definition of destitution, examining the role of legal or justiciable problems in the research participants’ pathways to destitution and the role (or potential role) of legal interventions in finding a path out of destitution as well as the barriers to a legal solution.

The research found that an individual’s vulnerability to a cycle of legal problems mirrors their vulnerability to the cluster of destitution problems that destitute individuals face: debt, ill health, labour market exclusion, and housing. There are identifiable intervention points that could conceivably assist with many of the difficulties in resolving the problems faced by destitute individuals. These intervention points sit alongside recognisable patterns of advice-seeking behaviour in the general population predicated on lack of awareness of legal rights or assistance to enforce them.

The key recommendations are:

  1. A statutory duty on destitution should be created. Primary legislation should establish a clear definition of destitution and a duty on public bodies to protect all persons lawfully present in the UK from destitution.
  2. Legal services should be co-located with other crisis and support services. Co-locating services would reduce referral fatigue and improve the ability of advisors to intervene earlier. The resourcing of legal services is vital in order to render any statutory duty to prevent destitution meaningful.
  3. Government should be placed under a positive duty to facilitate access to social security. The government should be placed under a positive duty to ensure that individuals are receiving the social security benefits they are entitled to. This would require government to address systemic issues in the administration of benefits.