Legal advice can transform lives, but it takes a lot of advisers to tackle the scale of labour exploitation affecting migrant and vulnerable workers in the UK today.  Since the LASPO Act in 2014 excluded employment from legal aid, and reduced legally aided immigration advice to a slither, the advice services in these areas were decimated. Many parts of the country are now legal deserts, and the few organisations that remain are almost always oversubscribed.

This is why in 2025, we started two ambitious projects to build capacity in the sector.

Building capacity for employment advice

With funding from the Greater London Authority, last year we kicked off a significant employment rights advice training programme. We delivered this to 30 advisers from 19 small charities and community groups working in London, that specialise in supporting migrant workers. This included the Southeast and East Asian Centre, Cardinal Hume Centre, Southall Black Sisters, Kalayaan, IRMO, and the Centre for Armenian Information & Advice, among others.

Our experienced Head of Employment, Sarmila Bose, guided two cohorts of learners through a five-week long in-depth training course covering employment law, employment tribunal procedure and enforcement, and how to better support migrants facing workplace disputes. 

Using the law to achieve change for sponsored workers

Thanks to a grant from the Baring Foundation, in 2025 we were also able to kickstart a new project aimed at organisations across the country, that advise migrant workers on employer-sponsored visas. 

We wanted to help attendees better understand how they can use the law to achieve stronger remedies for their communities, and reform the policies that create the power imbalance in sponsorship to begin with.

Our team of advisers and guest speakers delivered 5 training sessions, to a total of 154 frontline advisers This included sessions on:

• Work Sponsorship: Rules, risks and the government’s response 

• The deep dive: Immigration advice for workers exploited by visa sponsors

• Seasonal Worker Scheme: Supporting migrant horticultural workers

• The fight back: Supporting sponsored workers with Employment Tribunal claims

• Enforcing justice: Strategies to obtain Employment Tribunal awards

In addition, we started a Strategic Litigation Action Taskforce of organisations with capacity to provide legal advice, and an interest in strategic legal challenges. Chaired by our Head of Immigration, Luke Piper, this includes the excellent advisers at ATLEU, GMAIU, JCWI, Tulia and Central England Law Centre, among others, together with the Employment Legal Advice Network.

We were thrilled to identify two legal strategies as part of this group, secure private sector partners with an interest in supporting this work, and onboarding clients. For the remaining two years of the project, we will look to move these challenges forward, and widen our collective knowledge with a new series of training sessions led by experienced barristers.

If you’d like to join the group, send an email to luke.piper@workrightscentre.org and sign up to our newsletter to find out about our upcoming training sessions.