In the last few weeks, Govan Law Centre’s legal team have provided urgent legal advice and representation to prevent rough sleeping and homelessness in Glasgow.
We have enabled 40 vulnerable people who were street homeless – sometimes for many days – access emergency hotel, B&B or hostel accommodation.
We have assisted 10 clients who were in emergency homeless accommodation for more than 7 days obtain temporary furnished tenancies. We’ve acted for 14 clients evicted from Mears accommodation to secure alternative accommodation.
Many of our cases have required the drafting of petitions for judicial review in Scotland’s supreme civil court, the Court of Session in Edinburgh. In just over two weeks, we have drafted 30 petitions for judicial review to be lodged at Court with interim orders to be sought, however, such cases generally settle at the last minute in our clients’ favour.
All of these cases require a significant amount of emergency legal work including taking detailed instructions, statements, ingathering relevant documents and evidence, corresponding with local authorities, instructing where required interpreters, applying for urgent civil legal aid where emergency court proceedings are required to protect clients from rough sleeping and our in-house solicitor advocate drafting urgent legal proceedings and working with our Edinburgh agents, Drummond Miller LLP.
We are grateful for the hard work and dedication of all of our staff and our Edinburgh agents, Drummond Miller LLP who have made this vital work possible; and have been happy to work with a number of referral partners including, Shelter Scotland, Scottish Refugee Council, Homeless Project Scotland, Simon Community, the Glasgow City Mission and others.
