Expert blog - Trusted intermediaries: A proven path to accessible and cost-effective justice

Associate Professor Liz Curran, Nottingham Law School

It was with some excitement that I saw the release of a recent report, commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation, which highlights the critical role of trusted intermediaries in helping vulnerable individuals navigate law-related challenges, ranging from debt and housing insecurity to domestic abuse and accessing welfare benefits.

Co-authored by Dr Tara Mulqueen and Dr Lisa Wintersteiger, and produced in collaboration with Central England Law Centre, Advice Now, and the University of Warwick, the report offers compelling evidence for a more integrated, people-centred approach to justice.

In my reports for the oversight regulator in England and Wales it notes  that 3.6 million adults face unresolved legal disputes annually. Alarmingly, the research  shows that over a third of adults lack confidence in achieving a fair outcome, and nearly 90% believe the legal system favours the skilled and resourceful. This reflects a two-tier justice system, one that entrenches inequality.

There is a critical gap: early intervention is rare, and many people don’t recognise their problems as legal in nature. This delay leads to escalation, worsening outcomes for individuals and increasing costs for the state.

For over two decades, my research has focused on the impact of trusted intermediaries, such as community workers, support staff, and advice agencies, who are often the first point of contact for those facing legal problems.

As a former community lawyer, I’ve seen first-hand how partnerships between these intermediaries and legal support organisations, such as law centres, can reduce stress, improve outcomes, and tackle inequality.

This practice experience showed the critical link between funded specialist legal advice partners and trusted intermediaries in working together to realise the protections offered by laws, ensuring clients have full benefit of legal options open to them in a context where often they otherwise would not. Merely funding trusted intermediaries alone does not work where there is no legal advice partner. I have seen and documented the power in trusted intermediaries.

The Nuffield report underscores the importance of trust and safe spaces, enabling individuals to disclose sensitive issues and access legal support earlier. This holistic model not only identifies legal remedies more effectively but also empowers clients to act on them - often preventing escalation and improving long-term wellbeing.

Crucially, this approach is cost-effective. Evidence shows that early intervention through trusted intermediaries leads to downstream savings in health, housing, and social services. As noted in my submission to the House of Lords Inquiry on the Rule of Law, failure to support local expert-led responses can increase costs and reduce flexibility in public service delivery.

Funding is essential to enable specialist legal advisers and trusted intermediaries to collaborate effectively.

The NHS’s newly released 10-year strategy also emphasises the role of local agencies in early intervention. Justice must be part of this wider public service ecosystem. While it is encouraging to see debt and social security advice included, other areas, such as family law and consumer rights, must not be overlooked, given their impact on mental health and financial stability.

Research consistently shows that around 86% of people experiencing disadvantage or poverty seek help from non-legal sources, even when their problems have legal solutions. This highlights the urgent need to embed legal support within trusted community settings.

Policymakers should take note: investing in trusted intermediaries is not only a compassionate choice, it is a strategic one, backed by evidence and aligned with broader public service goals.

Claire Stern, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Central England Law Centre

At Central England Law Centre, the largest in the country, we see the scale of unmet legal need daily. Operating across Coventry and Birmingham, we receive over 10,000 enquiries each year but only have the capacity to take on around 1,700 legal cases and provide substantive advice to a further 2,300 people.

The demand is overwhelming, and decisions have to be made on a daily basis about how we can use our resources to help the most people in the most urgent need.

To address this, we’ve spent the past three years strategically embedding legal rights within our community by working closely with trusted intermediaries - those frontline professionals and organisations already supporting people in crisis. Our is aim is to ensure people have access to legal support and advice earlier in their problem.

Last year alone, we increased our referral network from 100 to 140 different services and organisations.

This approach is grounded in evidence from many years of partnership. The research from the Nuffield Foundation, in which we were closely involved, confirms that trusted intermediaries play a vital role in identifying legal issues early.

However, their efforts are often informal, underfunded, and constrained by their own knowledge and skills. Many feel they are plugging gaps in the system rather than adding value, and they stay involved because they know their clients won’t be listened to or receive support elsewhere.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Our approach is collaborative, as building a rights-based safety net requires relationships, responsiveness, and mutual understanding of the challenges we all face in supporting our communities with limited resources and increasing demand.

It also requires investment - not just in intermediaries, but in the legal advice infrastructure that supports them.

The Nuffield research is particularly valuable because it centres on voices often excluded from legal needs studies: migrants, refugees, women facing social exclusion, people with mental ill-health, young people at risk of homelessness, and those relying on foodbanks. It shows how legal problems cluster and escalates and are often rooted in systemic failures in housing, benefits, immigration, and social care.

The research confirmed what we see as practitioners every day - people often do not recognise that their problem is legal and if they do, they may feel afraid or powerless to act or think there isn’t a point in taking action. Access to legal advice often comes too late, is too difficult to access, or isn’t available, often due to limitations in legal aid and capacity, digital exclusion and the ability to find help and information.

Yet when the system works, it can be transformative. One young woman in the study - a survivor of childhood abuse - had faced repeated homelessness and struggled to access benefits due to PTSD, mental illness. and stigma. An advocacy organisation brought together a range of services to help her, including advice agencies and the law centre.

The findings of this research present a clear message - legal need is widespread, escalating, and deeply intertwined with structural disadvantage.

Addressing it requires a shift in approach, to recognise access to justice as a shared social responsibility and invest in the trusted networks already embedded within communities.

As the Ministry of Justice develops its Legal Support Strategy, there is a real opportunity to invest in local legal ecosystems. This means supporting both trusted intermediaries and legal advice providers. One without the other will not work.

In this way we can move from working in silos to building collaboration, and from disconnected approaches to ones that are grounded in local knowledge, tackle problems at the root, improve outcomes, and rebuild confidence in justice.

Conclusion

Government and regulators - both of which have the tools and statutory duties to improve access to justice - have been too slow to act.

But the evidence is clear - integrated, people-centred models that involve trusted intermediaries deliver better outcomes and are more cost-effective. Central England Law Centre and Advice Now are prime examples of innovative, evaluated services that work.

As the Ministry of Justice reviews its spending priorities, it must focus on what works. Funding should be directed towards models that have been independently assessed and shown to deliver results. Piloting, evaluating, and scaling up these approaches is a smarter use of public funds than continuing to support costly programmes that fail to meet community needs.

Sharing best practice, supporting service innovation, having robust evaluation which uses a growth mindset to support agencies improve and enabling law centres and intermediaries to co-design solutions with their communities is not just desirable, it’s essential. The research exists. The models are in place. What’s needed now is action.