From courtroom to community: making collective actions work for access to justice

On 28 September, we brought together people from across the collective actions and free legal advice communities for an event to explore a simple but important question: how can collective actions deliver the greatest possible benefit for consumers and communities?

Kindly hosted by Simmons & Simmons in London, our new Chair, Matthew Newick, opened the event with a keynote exploring the potential for collective actions to strengthen consumer protection and access to justice, before two panels looked at how we can turn that potential into lasting impact.

The need for free legal advice is significant. More than 11 million people in England and Wales experience a legal problem each year without receiving help, while demand for free legal advice has risen by more than 40% in five years.

But we also know what a difference advice makes. Our Access All Areas report found that every £1 spent advising consumers generates £10.40 in direct financial benefit for clients, alongside wider benefits including avoiding court proceedings and improving financial capability.

Our first panel, Unlocking the Unclaimed, explored how undistributed damages from collective actions can be reinvested in the organisations helping people understand and enforce their rights every day.

This is already happening. In 2025, we received our first undistributed damages from an opt-out collective action, with more than £3.7 million from the settlement of Gutmann v South Western Trains. This year, we awarded £3.9 million in three-year grants to 16 frontline organisations using these funds.

Our second panel turned to the collective actions regime itself and the role that everyone involved can play in making it work.

The discussion explored how Class Representatives, solicitors, funders and others across the ecosystem can work together to improve consumer awareness, increase engagement and ensure collective actions deliver access to justice. It also challenged us to think more broadly about success, looking beyond take-up rates to outcomes such as changes in defendant behaviour and wider policy.

Collective actions have the potential to strengthen consumer protection and access to justice in more than one way. Compensation reaching class members matters, and so does what happens to money that ultimately goes unclaimed.

Putting undistributed damages back into free legal advice means those funds can continue working for consumers, helping people understand their rights, challenge unfair treatment, and resolve problems that might otherwise escalate. 

Making the most of that opportunity will require collaboration and, as Matthew reflected in his keynote, this event demonstrated the commitment from all parts of the community to continue to work together to ensure access to justice continues to drive the collective redress regime.