Fiona Bawdon

Fiona is a legal affairs journalist, researcher and campaigner against social injustice on issues covering legal aid, immigration, women, youth and crime.  She is the communication consultant to We Belong: Young Migrants Standing Up, the co-founder and director of Impact: Law for Social Justice and the Co-founder and organiser of the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards.  From 2013-2014 she was research and communications director of Legal Actions Group’s Immigration and Asylum Law Project and wrote its ‘Chasing Status: If not British, then what am I?’ report.  This report, published in October 2014, reported on the plight of ‘surprised Brits’ who found they were living with irregular immigration status.  The report recommended that the government fast-track cases of people who lived in the UK from 1973 to ensure they continued to enjoy the full rights and entitlements of British citizens.  This research was the first to identity the Home Office failings that would later come to be known as the Windrush Scandal.