Meet the team

About us

NCLS employs around 38 people in a variety of roles. This includes senior management, solicitors, caseworkers and caseworker assistants.

Who we are

We have a robust system of governance with 12 trustees who oversee all our activities, and we hold the Advice Quality Standard.  At our most recent Advice Quality Service (AQS) audit the assessor said: “NCLS continues to provide valuable services which make a huge impact on its service users. NCLS performed extremely well against the AQS Standard. There were no corrective actions noted during the assessment, which is a testament to the excellent standards maintained by the team at NCLS.” 

NCLS’s senior management team meets weekly and consists of our Chief Executive, who is an experienced strategic manager and who has additional specialist expertise in media and communications; our experienced Director of Operations and Development, who previously worked on a legal aid contract at Shelter before moving into strategic management; and our Finance Manager, who is a qualified Management accountant. 

The Service Managers are qualified experts and act as senior caseworkers in their specialist areas of expertise – such as immigration, welfare rights and debt.

Client voice/lived experience 

We place client needs and wishes at the centre of our work with them, and we enable and empower them.

Your voice

As a legal charity our role is to inform people of their legal rights and options, and to support them to assert their rights. Our family court McKenzie Friend service, for example, provides experienced specialist volunteers who support, advise and attend hearings with clients, but do not represent them. Clients tell us that we help them find their voice. 

We recognise the value of involving communities and client voice in service design. For many clients we represent a period in their life that they would like to move on from, so involving them in ongoing focus groups is difficult. However, we listen carefully to their needs and use client feedback – including complaints – to help us review and improve services. 

Through NCAN we are closely connected with user-led groups representing various communities within Norfolk (e.g. Equal Lives – disability charity, New Routes Integration – refugee charity, Mancroft Advice Project – young people’s charity). Regular NCAN partnership meetings flag trends and current needs so that NCLS and other partner agencies are able to respond.   

We also have close working relationships with other local organisations, e.g. we set up our domestic abuse service at the request of local charity Leeway who saw a need among their user group.   

In addition we ask all our clients for their views on our service, and all feedback (whether via surveys, written or verbal) feeds into our service development. 

67% of our staff have personal experience of one or more of the issues we help with. 

Our outcome measurements show that clients’ wellbeing improves after receiving our advice. 

Feedback from users shows how valued our service is

95%

‘happy’ with service 

96%

said ‘people listened’ to my problems 

86%

found service ‘friendly’ 

95%

found advice ‘easy’ to understand 

75%

saw their situation improve after our advice

94%

would be ‘very likely’ to contact us again 

With NCLS, I feel like I am doing something important for the first time. We have a lovely team full of kind and patient people.

Staff testimonial
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