Interview: Hannah Martin on Access to Justice and Welfare Rights at Bristol Law Centre

Interviewee: Hannah Martin – Caseworker, Welfare Benefits team at Bristol Law Centre

Hannah is a caseworker on the Welfare Benefits team at Bristol Law Centre. She started as an advocacy volunteer and joined the team as a caseworker after graduating with an MA in Law from the University of Bristol.

Bristol Law Centre is a charity that provides free legal advice in specialist areas of social welfare law and also represents clients in court. The Centre has four teams: Housing, Employment & Discrimination, Asylum & Immigration, and Welfare Benefits. 

• What work do you do with Bristol Law Centre?

As a caseworker, I receive enquiries from clients looking to appeal a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) decision. Next, I assess the merits of their case to ensure there are grounds of appeal before assigning a volunteer to the case. I oversee the next stages, including pre-hearing interviews, drafting submissions, and attending First Tier Tribunal hearings.

• How does this work fit within our legal system?

Although our work centres around access to justice, it is not funded by legal aid. Other teams at the Law Centre are, but ours is funded privately by an organisation called Three Guineas Trust. There is legal aid funding for benefits work, but it is only available if a benefits case reaches the Upper Tribunal or a higher level of appeal. 

• What has been your path to doing this type of work?

I started out as a volunteer on the project (Legal Advocacy Support Projects with the Welfare Benefits Team). Before that, I was with the University of Bristol Law Clinic, which was my introduction to types of law other than corporate or commercial. Learning about the importance of pro-bono work encouraged me to volunteer and later work with the law centre.

• What advice would you give to someone aspiring to work towards making access to justice a reality?

A law clinic is definitely a good place to start. It gives you an idea of whether you’ll like social justice work. There are definitely other places to start, such as different volunteering positions in law centres or Citizens Advice work.

• What skills and qualities does your work require, and how have you developed them?

Client care skills are very important. You’re working with people who might not understand legal jargon, who might have mental health conditions or disabilities. Other skills, such as empathy, are also very important. Developing a broader understanding of the context in which your clients operate is crucial. I also recommend volunteering at places like Citizens Advice, where advice is provided outside the legal sphere.

• Any recent legal or policy developments impacting your work?

The Government announced changes to PIP eligibility, specifically the number of points and the way in which they must be achieved for the Daily Living component of the threshold. This change hasn’t taken effect yet, but we still have clients coming to us who are worried about it. I think with these changes looming, we see more people coming in with less clearly cut disability claims who seek to appeal their decisions before the new threshold comes into effect. This leads to more cases brought to us for which we simply don’t have the capacity, especially for trickier cases where the merits are less straightforward.

• Finally, if you could change one aspect of the current system to promote access to justice, what would it be?

The health assessments in PIP claims are often flawed due to the way they are conducted. For one, you get questions which are leading, or which don’t get the whole picture of the client’s conditions, and most of the time, medical records are not properly considered either.  There is a reason why our appeals have such high success rates: health assessments are frequently undertaken with limited consideration of crucial nuances within the eligibility criteria and relevant case law. You hear about health assessors having targets of having to turn down a certain number of people. This eventually leads to appeals, but these are time-consuming and further burden the system. Therefore, if we are to make a difference in access to welfare benefits, particularly regarding PIP, there needs to be an overhaul of the way these assessments are conducted.  

Thank you for your time, Hannah. To our readers, find out more about the Law Centre’s work here, and about vacancies here.