On 22 April 2026, two of our solicitors, Alexander Donnelly and Lorna Walker from GLC’s Prevention of Homeless Service, attended the Glasgow City Mission for the end of season breakfast. The breakfast was to reflect and share with partners our experiences at The Winter Project. We have been fortunate to be involved in this project over many years and watch how it has evolved and developed.
Mornings like this serve as a reminder of why we do this work as we always leave feeling very inspired. We heard success stories from the Winter Project Manager, Elyse MacKinnon and frontline workers who coordinated the Welcome Centre and supported the guests every night during the winter months, 1 December 2025 to 31 March 2026.
Our solicitor, Alec, who attended the Welcome Centre every Thursday morning to offer legal advice and support for people using the service shared some case studies of legal challenges we had to raise to ensure the Council were fulfilling their statutory duties, including a case involving a family with two young children to ensure that they were accommodated and challenging the Council’s decision.
Alec attended the Glasgow City Mission’s Night Shelter at the Britannia Inn in Glasgow between November 2025 and March 2026. These were people in crisis, the team at the City Mission had accommodated them for several days but they were not accommodated by the local authority despite repeated requests from the team. Every Thursday morning, Alec would head over to the hotel and the team would already have a good idea of who needed his help. He shared his experience and feelings about the Project. He was struck by the dedication of the team, especially the human aspect of this important work. Alec said:
“The guests were from all walks of life. I helped families who had been refused accommodation on the basis that they had an alleged local connection in England, people who had experienced family breakdown, people experiencing addiction issues and others with mental health issues. The project was a great opportunity to reach people in the community who otherwise would have potentially been left with no help and no access to justice and we were able to secure some really good outcomes for guests. Being able to sit down and have a coffee with the guests while we tried to help them broke down the barrier between that can form in the relationship between a solicitor and their client, especially when the client is vulnerable. I’m very proud of the work we did over the winter and am very glad to have been involved with it.”
It was a privilege to be part of this project as we value the work of our partner organisations and we had the opportunity to catch up and network with our friends at Social Bite, Lodging House Mission and the Simon Community. Joanna Gray also gave us a tour of the City Mission Building, reminding us how it was established in 1826 to help people facing poverty, homelessness and hard times and how it has developed and evolved throughout the times to meet the needs of vulnerable people.
Joanna shared how each person that enters the doors of the City Mission is welcomed and they do everything they can to help that person, starting with a warm nutritious meal, endless cups of tea, counselling services, support groups, art and music lessons, access to internet. There is always support available and there is long standing members of staff and people that have been attending the service for many years.
Partnership working is so important to us and we are grateful to our friends and existing partners, including Homeless Project Scotland, Scottish Refugee Council, Milk Café, Simon Community, The Marie Trust, Lodging House Mission and others. We aim to offer a holistic service, our job is to ensure people’s legal rights are met but we also recognise the human element of our work and if we continue to partner with organisations, we all work together to offer a wraparound service and ensure the person has the best outcome and chance of success in life.
