Countdown to zero? Jon Robins reports from a small oasis in what is otherwise a legal advice desert
‘As of this moment, there isn’t a single housing lawyer in Suffolk. We haven’t had once since 2014,’ director of legal services, Audrey Ludwig told me when I visited Suffolk Law Centre at the end of last year as part of the Justice in Time of Austerity* project.
Suffolk has a population of about 750,000 and covers nearly 1,600 square miles, which comprises more than 480 villages alongside larger towns such as Ipswich which has 133,000 people living there (and is home to the law centre). The county’s image of rural prosperity belies genuine legal need. According to figures from the End Child Poverty campaign published last year, in two constituencies (Ipswich and Waveney) almost 30% of children were considered to be living in poverty. ‘The most deprived areas are Ipswich and Lowestoft,’ says Ludwig. ‘Four wards are in the lowest 10% of the deprivation index in the country.’
Suffolk is the newest law centre in the network. It sprang
