Looking back on the first year of the Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre’s Social Justice Policy Clinic!
The last academic year saw the launch of the QMLAC’s Social Justice Policy Clinic, and a series of policy submissions submitted on behalf of the QMLAC. We look back here at the clinic’s first year, and celebrate our students’ successes!
To kick off the year, in September 2025, our Supervising Solicitor Katy Robinson and Director Professor Fran Ridout submitted written evidence to the Justice Committee’s Access to Justice Inquiry, highlighting the QMLAC’s experience of the increased demand for free legal advice and the lack of availability of legal aid even for those on low incomes. We were really pleased that this evidence was referenced in the Committee’s report on Access to Justice: Legal Aid published on 17 July 2026:
56. As outlined in chapter two, frozen means-test thresholds have reduced eligibility for legal aid each year. Evidence received by our inquiry highlights how, for civil legal aid, people who are clearly unable to afford their own representation are nevertheless deemed ineligible for legal aid.
In October 2025, our Social Justice Policy Clinic students submitted written evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee’s ‘Environment in Focus’ Inquiry regarding the impact of ‘legacy’ toxic landfill sites. Two of our students then attended the National Emergency Briefing on the climate and nature crisis on 27 November 2025 in Central Hall, Westminster, and wrote an insightful blog about the day and their reflections, for which they were awarded the Law School’s ‘Writing for the Future’ award.
Throughout the year, our students completed a Freedom of Information exercise across every local authority in England relating to the immigration status of children in local authority care, in collaboration with two children’s charities. The outcome of this research is to be published shortly.
Our students additionally completed a scoping task/literature review regarding existing tools and resources on citizenship and prepared a research briefing on the QMLAC’s clinic work on intimate image abuse, both in February 2026.
In March 2026, student researchers taking part in our Bail Observation Project presented their online poster ‘Preliminary Findings: Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre’s Bail Observation Project’ at the Socio-legal Studies Association’s annual conference. A full report of their findings will be published later this summer.
In April 2026, our students hosted a pop-up consultation workshop for students to respond to the national consultation ‘Growing Up in the Online World’ on children’s use of social media, and the QMLAC submitted our own response to the consultation in May 2026. Our response was informed by our decade of experience running our public legal education project ‘SPITE for Schools’ where we facilitate workshops to empower secondary school students to understand their rights and responsibilities around of the law of image-based abuse, and to promote online safety. We were very happy to see the government’s updated Summary of Evidence issued in July 2026, which noted in particular some of the less commonly highlighted benefits of social media for children we included in our response: the importance of education in developing media literacy and digital skills to prepare children for an online adulthood; and the potential additional benefits through social connections for children with additional learning needs. We were similarly glad to see the Summary of Evidence note our (and other respondents’) concerns around the increased risk of cyberbullying and online harassment, as well as concerns around data collection and privacy.
In May 2026 our Supervising Solicitor submitted a written response to the government's call for evidence on the new Independent Appeals Body based on our students’ findings in our Bail Observation Project and focusing on the issue of immigration bail hearings under the new proposals.
And to wrap up the year, in July 2026 we submitted a written response to the Solicitors Regulation Authority's consultation 'Strengthening our Continuing Competence Approach' on professional legal ethics, in collaboration with Professor Nigel Spencer of the Queen Mary Hub for Professional Practice, highlighting the importance of opportunities for law students and other aspiring legal professionals to learn about professional legal ethics at an early stage in their careers.
Thanks so much to all of our amazing students: Bridget Craghill, Faik Berk Bozkurt, Imaane Patel, Jeanne Pinson, Kady Singh, Michelle Dankyi, Tanmay Jadhav, and Chanithma Perera for their contributions to our first year of policy work, and to our wonderful academic and external partners!
For more details of the Social Justice Policy Clinic and how to get involved in our work, click here.