Our history

The UK legal profession set up the Foundation in response to widely held concerns about difficulties many people have in accessing the legal advice they need to uphold their rights and challenge injustices, and the lack of available funding for this. Lord Goldsmith KC PC, who was Attorney General of England and Wales from 2001 to 2007, was a particular driving force in the Foundation’s establishment in 2008, becoming the first Chair of the Foundation’s Trustee Board, a post which he held until 2020. We were initially established to act as a distribution vehicle for income derived from Pro Bono Costs Orders, pursuant to s194 Legal Services Act 2007.

The Foundation’s charitable objects are:

• the provision of financial and other support (including such financial support as is envisaged by section 194 of the Legal Services Act 2007 as amended or re-enacted from time to time) to persons who provide, or organise or facilitate the provision of, legal advice or assistance (by way of representation or otherwise) which is free of charge (that is, otherwise than for or in expectation of fee, gain or reward) and which is provided directly or indirectly to people who are in need of such advice or assistance by reason of youth, age, ill-health, disability, financial hardship or other disadvantage; and
• the promotion of such other purposes aimed at improving access to justice being exclusively charitable according to the law of England and Wales as the Trustees may from time to time determine.”

The Foundation is a fundraising grant maker. This means we raise funds from a range of sources and then distribute those funds in grants to appropriate beneficiaries. We take a collaborative approach and work with donors and frontline agencies to develop funding criteria which both meet the needs of the donor and the funded partners.

Our Fundraising

Since 2008 we have added a number of income streams to our fundraising activity, initially through legal walks and residual client balances from solicitors accounts. Over the last ten years we have worked in partnership with the Ministry of Justice, distributing funds on their behalf over a series of grant programmes. The Ministry has recently announced a new funding programme which the foundation will deliver, running up to 2029.

In 2024 we secured a £30million grant from the National Lottery Community Fund, which became our flagship grant programme Improving Lives Through Advice, a five year unrestricted funding programme to support the delivery of free social welfare legal advice across England.

We are currently focused on consolidating our position as the prescribed charity to receive undistributed damages from opt out collective actions at the Competition Appeal Tribunal. Where the case settles, the rules do not currently provide for a prescribed charity. We have therefore intervened in the three case which have settled so far and have been successful with each of those interventions to date. In one case, Gutmann v SW Trains, we have received the funds and have announced a new funding programme – Apply for a grant | The Access to Justice Foundation

Our Grant Making

We only fund agencies who know how to work effectively and efficiently with the grants they receive. We run open rounds of applications for grants, so applications can be assessed fairly and consistently. We carry out due diligence on all applications, our experienced grants team assess applications considering factors such as the quality of the application, the ability of the applicant organisation to carry out the work on time and on budget, whether the applicant’s project is duplicative of any work already being done.

The Foundation is now, over 16 years after its establishment, a well respected and experienced grant-maker. We have now made a total of 1,097 grants to 380 advice providers. Our income has grown from £39,266 in 2008 to £10,739,408 in 2023.  Our grant making has grown from £25,050 in 2009 to £39,114,295 worth of grants currently in place.

Some examples of organisations we are currently funding:

1. Advice Now: Providing easy-to-use simple guides on how to resolve a range of everyday legal problems which are accessed by nearly a million people each year.
2. Nishkam Civic Association: A Birmingham-based Sikh association. Using the law to help keep people in their homes, retain their jobs and ensure they have a basic income.
3. SATEDA: A Kent based domestic violence charity providing court-based support services to women. They have seen a 97% increase in demand for this service over the last two years and describe our five-year grant to them as transformational.

Some feedback from our funded partners of how much they value our support:

“We need to be responsive and expert across multiple areas of law so that we can provide exactly what clients need. It is only through flexible and multi-year funding, like that from The Access to Justice Foundation, that we are able to resource this.”  – Cumbria Law Centre

“By funding this project, you have allowed us to employ staff to help clients with remote and digital advice where appropriate. This has particularly been helpful when dealing with a significant number of vulnerable clients who would have struggled to use digital means to access advice” – Citizens Advice Sherwood and Newark

“Our Mobile Legal Adviser attends a range of locations around our large, rural county which are familiar to and trusted by local people. Her work provides greater accessibility for people for whom rural isolation and digital literacy are problematic. If clients are able to access advice in a way convenient to them, they are less likely to bury their heads in the sand and leave legal problems unresolved.” – Norfolk Community Law Service

We keep our organisational overheads to a minimum (at least under 10%), ensuring maximum funds reach the frontline where they are most needed, and we are committed to keeping our overheads as low as possible as we grow.

Governance

The Foundation is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (company registration number 06714178) and a charity registered with the Charity Commission (charity registration number 1126147) and also registered in Scotland (No. SC048584). We operate across the UK, although the majority of our activity to date has been in England and Wales.

Our board currently has 14 trustees with a range of relevant skills and expertise, their details can be found on our website.

The board has three committees (i) Governance, risk and audit, (ii) Human Resources and Nominations and (iii) Grants

The board also convenes working groups as needed, for example we currently have a working group overseeing our collective actions work.

Each of the committees reports back to each board meeting.

The foundation has four members, The Law Society of England and Wales, Cilex, the Bar Council and Advice Services Alliance. Each of the members appoints a nominee to sit on the Foundation’s board. The Lady Chief Justice also appoints a nominee trustee from the judiciary. 

Strategy

https://atjf.org.uk/about/our-strategy 

Our approach to tackling inequality

We are committed to

• Consistently and meaningfully applying equality, diversity and inclusion as a lens whenever we design next steps to take forward our work.
• Planning how to further embed inclusive practices and lived experience in our external and grantmaking work over the next 3 years.
• Working to build an equitable organisation with a diverse staff team & board and with inclusive policies, systems, & processes.

Anderson Quigley is acting as an advisor to Access to Justice Foundation. An executive search process is being carried out by Anderson Quigley in addition to the public advertisement.

The closing date for applications is 20 March 2026.

Applications should consist of:

• A full CV.
• A covering letter  (2 pages of A4) outlining your motivation and details of how you meet the qualification, skills and experience criteria of the person specification.
• Please include details of two referees in your CV, though please note that we will not approach your referees without your prior consent and only should you be shortlisted.

Should you wish to discuss further details about the role in strict confidence, please get in touch with Helene Usherwood at helene.usherwood@andersonquigley.com or +44 (0)7719 322 669 or Aino Betts at aino.betts@andersonquigley.com or +44(0)7743 934 723.