Our Social Impact

Supporting access to justice for people entitled to welfare benefits

With COVID-19 a continuing challenge for people experiencing poverty, we’re expanding our partnership with anti-poverty Zacchaeus 2000 Trust (Z2K) to ensure its clients receive the benefits they are entitled to – and as quickly as possible.

For those that rely on disability benefits, explains Anela Anwar, Chief Executive of Z2K, the implications of being wrongly denied benefits or offered benefits at an inappropriate level can be catastrophic. It may mean people being left destitute, unable to put food on the table or to keep the lights on: “People are sitting in the dark to save on their bills.” That’s why we have continued to provide Pro Bono representation helping Z2K clients appeal negative benefits decisions, an initiative that began in 2019 and expanded in 2021 when we launched our partnership with long-standing client, Atkins Global.

Our team has seen a number of case wins over the past year. August 2021 saw our pilot collaboration case with Atkins Global achieve a successful outcome for the vulnerable client we represented. In September 2021, a second team was able to secure a rare five-year award and back-payment of benefits (both at enhanced rates) for a client in a challenging case that involved issues around daily living and mobility. Speaking on the initiative, Ed Egerton, General Counsel at Atkins, said: “This is such an important Pro Bono partnership for Atkins/SNC-Lavalin, working with Charles Russell Speechlys and Z2K, on cases that can make a difference. I’m so pleased that the first case was a success and am confident that this will inspire others in the Atkins and Charles Russell Speechlys teams to get involved and invest their efforts in the partnership.”

Early intervention

Hoping to head off an Appeal process that can take years – and with a system still working through a COVID-19 backlog – we are also launching a project to help clients complete the paperwork required to apply for disability benefits. “It’s about upstreaming our intervention,” says Anela. “We’re seeing that where someone is supported with their form-filling they get a better decision, which reduces the need for people to go forward with the Appeal process.” Z2K will use what is learned from the work to feed into its work on policy campaigning, particularly around reform of the disability assessment process.

40+

lawyers trained to work on the Disability Benefit Appeals initiative.

£100,000+

awarded in respect of wrongly withheld or back payments.

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