In the first year of the pandemic, we redirected our resources to support organisations using legal action in response to the worsening discrimination and disadvantage as a result of the government’s approach to handling the pandemic.
Our grantees used the law in different ways (empowering, persuading, and challenging), to achieve changes in government policy, reach thousands of people to understand their rights, and collaborate in new ways.
Our learning partners took a look at the work that happened under these grants and the lessons that can be learned from it. Read their report here.
To mark the launch of this report, we asked some of our grantees for their honest reflections on how the pandemic impacted their work using legal action to achieve social change. Here’s what five of them said.
Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland
The Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland was established in 2020 as Scotland’s legal hub for environmental justice. The pandemic adjusted the way we prioritised our objectives and addressed accessibility. We began with our advocacy in policy and law reform to reduce the barriers to access to justice in environmental matters; and launched our free legal advice service on environmental and related planning law for civil society groups.
Launching online meant that we weren’t initially hindered by trying to find suitable office premises and overall had reduced costs. The key challenge remains in pursuing strategic public interest litigation, but this will come with the success of our other work programmes.
“The pandemic presented Greater Manchester Law Centre with a number of opportunities as well as challenges regarding our legal practice and community justice campaigning work.
With face-to-face advice immediately halted and our venue closed our initial starting point was to pull together the various strands of our advice expertise and collate this into a resource that could be used by and for the community. We launched our Covid 19 Survival Guide in April 2020 and updated this throughout the pandemic. We produced digital and printed versions of the guide, the latter being distributed across community solidarity networks (e.g., along with food parcels) as a way of both strengthening these networks but also to raise our service offer with grassroots activists that were collectivising and harnessing community power in practical ways. We also undertook work with housing campaigners providing materials and training regarding tenant rights along with specific campaign materials regarding the stay in evictions around a campaign called Greater Manchester Against Evictions.
We have built on these contacts post-pandemic developing advice, information, and campaigning work together and fighting for change as we emerge from the pandemic and face the issues of social, racial and economic inequality that in many cases have worsened over the past two years.”
“The greatest impact of the pandemic was no doubt the sudden acceleration and shift to digital ways of working. Lockdown was a catalyst for re-organising how we work with colleagues, clients and partners. This was coupled with a need for emergency action, which conflicted with using the law strategically. This was especially difficult to manage as PILC staff witnessed first-hand the collective need of homeless migrants and Domestic Abuse survivors, yet found it difficult to litigate due to the conservative approach taken by the Courts during the pandemic.
For some of the benefits that digitalisation has brought, particularly around flexibility and reach, it has also enabled new forms of gatekeeping and increased exclusion. More importantly however, digitalisation has hollowed social interactions and stripped them to bare functionality. Although PILC has moved to a hybrid form of working, there is no doubt that meaningful relationships and engagement with social justice require the unmediated sharing of space and in-person exchanges.”
“The Covid-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted most of our client groups and plunged them further into crisis, and their legal support requirements changed from the first national lockdown, due to several measures implemented to deal with the pandemic. For instance, the suspension of benefit conditionality and sanctions, and debt recovery for benefit claimants meant that our intervention shifted from specialist support on substantive issues of law, to mostly generalist support for those engaging with the DWP for the first time as universal credit claimants. The travel ban, automatic visa extensions, and reduced opening hours of resolution centres, meant that increased demand in immigration law was mostly from migrants without recourse to public funds and those fleeing domestic abuse to amend their immigration status. The implementation of the furlough scheme increased demand in employment law with our advicelines busier than ever with clients worried about their precarious employment statuses.
Remote working became our primary mode of delivery, however, this proved to be problematic for some of our more vulnerable client groups, and we had to find alternative methods of engagement. We also experienced increased demand for support to access other services as the Courts and other statutory bodies moved their services online. In the aftermath of the removal of the Covid-19 measures, we have now implemented a hybrid working model with remote and digital delivery fully incorporated into our service offer, whilst along with our delivery partners, recognising that client choice should ultimately determine the mode of delivery.”
Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit
“There is no doubt that being forced to move all of our organisation’s operations online in the space of a few days was painful but the benefits have been enormous. Our two teams, separated by geography, have become one. Our training programme, which launched online, was immediately national in its reach, available to higher numbers of participants and for a fraction of the price.
Perhaps most importantly we have found smaller, legal organisations, like ourselves able to develop their profile and presence in a policy context. Limited resources have become less of a barrier, with online meetings easing access. The appetite for responsive, evidence-based policy asks mean organisations with first-hand evidence of the impact of law and policy have a voice that is especially relevant.
March 2020 brought many changes to the way we work, most of these have been a force for good; for our team, for our partnerships and for disrupting the power dynamics of those working to influence decision makers.”
