The Strategic Legal Fund
The Strategic Legal Fund (SLF) is designed to support legal work in the UK that goes beyond securing justice for an individual and makes a significant contribution to law, practice, and procedures to uphold and promote the rights of people seeking asylum, refugees and, more generally, migrants.
The SLF will fund strategic legal work in any area of law where asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants experience disadvantage or discrimination as a result of migration status. This includes (but is not restricted to) potential cases in the areas of:
- Access to justice.
- Asylum and asylum support.
- Community care.
- Discrimination.
- Education.
- Housing.
- Human rights, and
- Welfare benefits.
However, applications must be to fund one of the following two kinds of strategic legal work:
- The research and development of cases pre-litigation including: gathering evidence to test a hypothesis or research to establish authorities’ policy and practice, identifying potential plaintiffs/applicants/appellants; researching whether to proceed; translating relevant material; and evaluating a litigation strategy, or
- Third party “interventions” in existing cases, which allow a non-party intervener to assist the court in arriving in its decision in a case, acting as an amicus curiae, a friend of the court. Funds can be used for evidence-gathering, instructing counsel, preparing the application for permission to intervene.
Grants up to £30,000 are available. Please note that the Fund has a limited budget and therefore encourages applications for smaller amounts. The average grant size is likely to be around £12,000. Applicants will be expected to demonstrate how their proposal represents value for money. Grants may be approved for a lesser amount than requested.
The SLF aims to complement longer-term funding with short-term grants to respond to legal opportunities. The maximum grant length is 12 months, and most grants are for six months or less. The SLF will support strategic legal work in the UK which benefits asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants, such as (please note that this ,may not represent an exclusive list):
- Migrants or the children of migrants.
- Those who are living in poverty.
- Those who are under 25, and
- Those who face significant disadvantage or discrimination in connection with their (or their parents’) migration status.
The Fund is being managed by the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) on behalf of the partners funding the programme.
Further information, guidance and an application form is available on the ILPA website.
Contact details for the Fund are:
The Strategic Legal Fund
Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association
Lindsey House
40 – 42 Charterhouse Street
London
EC1M 6JN
Email: [email protected]