Immigration legislation agency making £1.7m in authorized help loses contract over requirements

[ad_1] An immigration legislation agency that signed up 1000's of asylum seekers and generated earnings of £1.7m in authorized help within the final 12 months, regardless of solely using 5 solicitors to characterize them, has had its authorities contract terminated after considerations about its efficiency, the Guardian has discovered.

The choice leaves many asylum seekers struggling to seek out new authorized representatives at a time when the federal government is rising the variety of instances it refuses.

Within the 12 months ending June 2025 preliminary asylum grants fell from 58% to 48%, leaving extra individuals having to lodge appeals, one thing that's troublesome to do and not using a authorized consultant.

Middlesex Regulation Chambers’ authorized help earnings for immigration work dramatically elevated from £43,000 in 2021 to £1.7m in 2025. The agency is listed on the Solicitors Regulation Authority web site as having 15 places of work across the nation, many in authorized help deserts resembling Peterborough, Plymouth and Crawley.

When the Guardian phoned these places of work there was both no reply or a receptionist for the workplace block the place the agency rented an area mentioned it was not there.

The director of Middlesex Regulation Chambers, prison defence solicitor Sheraz Chowdhry, mentioned the agency had deliberate to broaden into these areas however usually had not completed so and had now terminated rental preparations for these workplace areas.

It at the moment has one solicitor employed at its Southall workplace doing non-public immigration work, one solicitor at an workplace in Canary Wharf in east London doing household work and a small workforce at its Uxbridge workplace doing prison defence work. Authorized help contracts proceed for these areas of labor.

Chowdhry joined the agency on the finish of final 12 months simply months earlier than the earlier lawyer accountable for immigration work, Hina Choudhery, died from problems of most cancers.

He mentioned: “In the end the agency, obstructed by Hina’s poor well being during the last two years or so, has discovered it troublesome to take care of its as soon as very excessive requirements within the immigration division.”

He added he discovered concerning the termination of the authorized help contract for immigration work simply weeks in the past. “The choice was additionally solely communicated to us through electronic mail on 20 August 2025.”

When requested to clarify why the agency had expanded its caseload so dramatically and the way it was doable to supply satisfactory authorized illustration for 1000's of asylum seekers with simply 5 immigration solicitors and a mixture of 15 junior and extra senior caseworkers, he mentioned: “No solicitor was right here through the growth section. It's troublesome for me to clarify how the agency all of a sudden grew so giant in such a brief area of time. I have no idea.”

A typical caseload for a legally aided asylum solicitor or caseworker is 15–20. With the variety of employees employed by the agency throughout its interval of speedy growth every solicitor and caseworker would have had about 164 instances.

Frances Timberlake, of Migrants Organise, which has many migrant members who complained concerning the service offered by the agency, mentioned: “It's the Ministry of Justice’s responsibility to make sure that authorized recommendation is offered to individuals who want it. However many years of funding cuts and neglect to the authorized help system have left many individuals in our communities with none help.

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“We urgently want funding for good authorized recommendation and for the federal government to cease pushing migrants into hostile, costly authorized processes simply as a charade for Reform,” she mentioned.

Dr Jo Wilding, a researcher and senior lecturer in authorized help on the College of Sussex and an immigration barrister, mentioned: ‘This was utterly foreseeable when one small agency with only a few accredited employees arrange places of work in a number of new areas, together with six severe recommendation desert areas, and began taking over tons of of instances.

“It ought to have been apparent that susceptible individuals had been being exploited however the Authorized Help Company doesn’t appear to have recognized or recognised that there was an issue. The answer to that is to cease treating authorized help for probably the most susceptible individuals as if it was a market, and to pay that cash to a good professional legislation agency or not-for-profit to do the work.”

Rami, a former shopper of Middlesex Regulation Chambers, mentioned: “It’s good that the federal government has stepped in and closed this agency. But it surely feels too late, as a result of lots of people like me have already suffered due to the work of this agency. I needed to do my asylum interview with none actual recommendation beforehand, holding my proof in my hand that I had translated on Google as a result of the legislation agency had not completed it. I've misplaced lots of time in my life due to this. I've gray hair now when earlier than this I didn't.

“Individuals looking for asylum face lots of issues and a lawyer might help us to get by means of unhealthy conditions. However it is vitally troublesome to discover a authorized help lawyer and many individuals don’t communicate English so can't know which is an effective legislation agency and which isn't.”

A Authorized Help Company spokesperson mentioned: “Middlesex Regulation Chambers’ immigration authorized help contract has been terminated.

“Companies that maintain authorized help contracts are topic to annual critiques. These can result in monetary sanctions or, as on this case, contract termination the place requirements should not met.”