An immigration law firm that signed up thousands of asylum seekers and generated income of £1.7m in legal aid in the last year, despite only employing five solicitors to represent them, has had its government contract terminated after concerns about its performance, the Guardian has learned.
The decision leaves many asylum seekers struggling to find new legal representatives at a time when the government is increasing the number of cases it refuses.
In the year ending June 2025 initial asylum grants fell from 58% to 48%, leaving more people having to lodge appeals, something that is difficult to do without a legal representative.
Middlesex Law Chambers’ legal aid income for immigration work dramatically increased from £43,000 in 2021 to £1.7m in 2025. The firm is listed on the Solicitors Regulation Authority website as having 15 offices around the country, many in legal aid deserts such as Peterborough, Plymouth and Crawley.
When the Guardian phoned these offices there was either no reply or a receptionist for the office block where the firm rented a space said it was no longer there.
The director of Middlesex Law Chambers, criminal defence solicitor Sheraz Chowdhry, said the firm had planned to expand into those areas but in most cases had not done so and had now terminated rental arrangements for those office spaces.
It currently has one solicitor employed at its Southall office doing private immigration work, one solicitor at an office in Canary Wharf in east London doing family work and a small team at its Uxbridge office doing criminal defence work. Legal aid contracts continue for those areas of work.
Chowdhry joined the firm at the end of last year just months before the previous lawyer in charge of immigration work, Hina Choudhery, died from complications of cancer.
He said: “Ultimately the firm, obstructed by Hina’s poor health over the last two years or so, has found it difficult to maintain its once very high standards in the immigration department.”
He added he found out about the termination of the legal aid contract for immigration work just weeks ago. “The decision was also only communicated to us via email on 20 August 2025.”
When asked to explain why the firm had expanded its caseload so dramatically and how it was possible to provide adequate legal representation for thousands of asylum seekers with just five immigration solicitors and a mix of 15 junior and more senior caseworkers, he said: “No solicitor was here during the expansion phase. It is difficult for me to explain how the firm suddenly grew so large in such a short space of time. I do not know.”
A typical caseload for a legally aided asylum solicitor or caseworker is 15–20. With the number of staff employed by the firm during its period of rapid expansion each solicitor and caseworker would have had about 164 cases.
Frances Timberlake, of Migrants Organise, which has many migrant members who complained about the service provided by the firm, said: “It is the Ministry of Justice’s duty to ensure that legal advice is available to people who need it. But decades of funding cuts and neglect to the legal aid system have left many people in our communities without any support.
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“We urgently need funding for good legal advice and for the government to stop pushing migrants into hostile, expensive legal processes just as a charade for Reform,” she said.
Dr Jo Wilding, a researcher and senior lecturer in legal aid at the University of Sussex and an immigration barrister, said: ‘This was completely foreseeable when one small firm with very few accredited staff set up offices in several new areas, including six serious advice desert areas, and started taking on hundreds of cases.
“It should have been obvious that vulnerable people were being exploited but the Legal Aid Agency doesn’t seem to have identified or recognised that there was a problem. The solution to this is to stop treating legal aid for the most vulnerable people as if it was a market, and to pay that money to a reputable expert law firm or not-for-profit to do the work.”
Rami, a former client of Middlesex Law Chambers, said: “It’s good that the government has stepped in and closed this firm. But it feels too late, because a lot of people like me have already suffered because of the work of this firm. I had to do my asylum interview without any real advice beforehand, holding my evidence in my hand that I had translated on Google because the law firm had not done it. I have lost a lot of time in my life because of this. I have grey hair now when before this I did not.
“People seeking asylum face a lot of problems and a lawyer can help us to get through bad situations. But it is very difficult to find a legal aid lawyer and many people don’t speak English so cannot know which is a good law firm and which is not.”
A Legal Aid Agency spokesperson said: “Middlesex Law Chambers’ immigration legal aid contract has been terminated.
“Firms that hold legal aid contracts are subject to annual reviews. These can lead to financial sanctions or, as in this case, contract termination where standards are not met.”