Duty Scheme Legal Advisor

Could you be our new Duty Scheme Legal Advisor? You will play a pivotal role in supporting ASAP’s duty scheme at the First Tier Tribunal (Asylum Support) which offers vital, free legal representation for people seeking asylum who need access to justice after being wrongly refused Home Office housing or financial support. 

The Asylum Support Appeals Project (ASAP) is a small national charity which was set up in 2003 to reduce the destitution of people seeking asylum by protecting their legal rights to food and shelter. ASAP delivers three strands of work:

• We offer free, high-quality legal representation at the Asylum Support Tribunal (AST) to people appealing against Home Office decisions to refuse or discontinue their support

• We provide asylum support advice and training to hundreds of frontline organisations, advice agencies and legal practitioners working with people seeking asylum each year. We operate an advice line and online forum (Asylum Support Advice Network -ASAN) for over 1000 members

• We use our strong evidence base to improve policies and procedures on asylum support through closely linked policy work and strategic litigation

Alongside this, we run a women’s project, to ensure we offer a gender sensitive service to destitute women seeking asylum, to train women’s organisations in asylum support law, and to progress policy work for women seeking asylum, currently focused on access to support for those experiencing domestic abuse

We are looking for someone who is committed to access to justice for people refused housing and financial support from the Home Office. You will assist with the day to day running of the duty scheme, ensuring it offers a quality service to appellants and referrers. You will support our volunteer advocates (volunteer solicitors and barristers) to provide high quality legal representation and advice. You will be legally-minded with a strong interest in asylum support and have the ability, after induction and with ongoing supervision from our Head of Legal, to provide advice and legal representation to appellants at the asylum support Tribunal (AST) and answer calls on our advice line. You will feed in to our wider work on asylum support policy and strategic litigation, working collaboratively with colleagues in the policy team to ensure they are kept up to date with issues arising out of appeals.

This is a new, full-time position. Our offices are in East London, near the AST. Under our hybrid working policy, full-time staff work from our offices for a minimum of 2 days per week.