Second Tier Advice available:  EU Rights and Brexit Hub

Hello all,

We just wanted to let you know about the EU Rights & Brexit Hub; an ESRC-funded 3 yr project, the main arm of which is a second tier advice clinic, based in the Law School of the University of York, working with advice organisations who work with EU/EEA nationals. 

The idea is we can give advice and drafting support on queries where EU nationals have problems accessing public services - primarily, we imagine, benefits, but also any issues relating to other public services also welcome.

We hope we are filling a bit of a gap (or else, helping with a capacity problem!). There are plenty of organisations helping with settled status applications, and that’s not what we are trying to do. We are interested in problems accessing benefits during transition, the ‘grace period’ (until end of June 2021) and beyond. EU nationals are becoming more vulnerable to administrative obstacles, and also discrimination in these contexts, and our aim is to help, while also trying to capture and document this, in a parallel (anonymised) ethnography. We will also help with, and conduct, policy work where appropriate - e.g. feeding in to consultations, or making submissions to, e.g., the EU Commission, the Independent Monitoring Authority, and/or the Joint Committee.

This ‘legal action research’ method has worked well in the past to highlight injustices, and help cases get further than they would otherwise have done. 

We hope to combine specialist academic expertise with substantial advice experience, and put it to good use.
Our website is https://www.eurightshub.york.ac.uk/ where you can find details about consulting the clinic, and we’ve attached a blurb to this post as well.

*We are a nation-wide hub* - advisers around the UK can consult us. Please do!

Thanks, Charlotte