THE Covid-19 pandemic has been highlighting so many contemporary problems — not least how it is exacerbating inequalities already on the increase in Britain and internationally even before the first lockdown — and Jobs and Homes focuses on its impact on the law and people’s experiences of access to justice.

Its author is David Renton, a barrister specialising in housing and employment law, and his book is a highly readable journey through the civil justice system, illustrated by a series of cases where the author acted for clients in county courts and employment tribunals up and down the country.

Renton weaves the political and policy contexts into the narrative, including the current housing crisis, without being overtly didactic. He provides a critical understanding of the civil justice system’s shortcomings, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, which were made worse by the cuts to legal aid as a result of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders act (2012).

And this was just as the housing crisis was increasing the pressures on tenants, alongside the pressures on employees as the result of precarious  employment.

Then came the lockdowns, with further pressures for legal services to go online in order to cope. But cases were becoming ever more complex — the pandemic was exacerbating the problems that were being experienced, along with the links between housing and employment concerns.

Renton provides vivid illustrations of the injustices that can arise from hurriedly organised online proceedings on such important matters as whether or not to take a child into care.

The human stories are interspersed with reflections on the wider context as successive lockdowns take effect, set against the background of Boris Johnson’s own hospitalisation and Dominic Cummings infamous drive to test his eyesight.

Meanwhile, the backlog of legal cases has piled up, despite official optimism about the potential for new forms of software to magic the problems away.  

While the civil justice system comes in for much criticism, the author provides some sympathetic pen portraits of those judges who do react humanely in response to people’s problems. By the end of the book, the reader comes to recognise the ones who are prepared to listen as well as those who generally react with considerably less empathy.

Jobs and Homes reads as a diary and, as the year progresses, the situation deteriorates further. Tenants are increasingly at risk of being evicted in the future and there are increasing pressures on employees to accept relatively inadequate settlements with the fear that further delays could lead to even worse outcomes. And Renton includes reflections on his own family problems, movingly recounting his father’s deteriorating health and ultimate passing.

He set out with the hope that by the end of his book readers would view the law and our society differently and he concludes by speculating on the extent to which the pandemic would make systems more sensitive to tenants’ and workers’ needs and rights.

Covid-19 has exposed continuing vulnerabilities, including the fact that people’s access to legal aid is becoming increasingly difficult. But there are pointers towards more positive responses, such as the Renters Union and Acorn’s campaign to end no-fault evictions.

These need to be part of wider movements for social change.  

Published by Legal Action Group, £20.