HCLC News

We are delighted to announce that, with the help of students and pro bono staff from BPP Law School, we have now launched a new service to help people fill out their Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and Employment Support Allowance (ESA) forms.

ESA and DLA application forms can prove very difficult to fill out correctly.  We want to make sure that any resident in Hackney who is entitled to receive ESA or DLA doesn't miss out by not completing the form properly.

To access the service, people who live or work in Hackney must call 020 7633 4531 and leave their name and contact telephone number. A law student from BPP will then call back during office hours to gather more detailed information about their query.  If suitable, an appointment may be made for the person seeking help with a HCLC supervised BPP law student volunteering on a Tuesday afternoon.  All appointments will be at Dalston CLR James Library.

Welcoming the new service, HCLC Chair Ian Rathbone said: "Filling in forms can hold terrors for anyone from any walk of life, and can often result in people not filling them in and claiming what they need to survive, or filling them incorrectly. This service will help people fill in ESA and DLA  forms which we have noted have proved to be difficult for folk to fill in correctly. It will also save the authorities time and money by getting the correctly filled in form first time around hopefully.

We are grateful to  to tutors Jessica Austen, Laura Rowland and Diana Kirsch at BPP Law School for their help in making this possible and Hackney Council's Libraries Service for all their support in this.  It's all part of HCLC's continuing efforts of taking our service to where people are in the community to help them access the system".

*You can download a poster with detailed information about the new Dalston Pop-Up ESA and DLA form filling service HERE!* *And don't forget about our Dalston Pop-Up service for people with debt or consumer law problems.  Download a poster with more information HERE.*