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.

“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.”

Never underestimate the attraction of a good can-kick. That would appear to be the message coming out of Tirana on Thursday when Uefa announced it had not taken the epochal decision on overseas league fixtures that the world of football had anticipated. Instead, the executive committee decided it would embark on a round of consultation, one that would even take in the considerations of supporters to boot.

This is likely a sensible decision. There has been a fair amount of surprise in some quarters that the question of whether and by how much football leagues should be allowed to move from domestic to international is only now being properly debated in the corridors of power. After all, the first writ in this debate was served by the promoter Relevent against the United States Soccer Federation in 2019. Only with the prospect of La Liga staging a fixture between Barcelona and Villarreal in Miami as soon as December has the issue come into focus. But to have discussion at all will be regarded by many as better late than never. It is also a break with the current way of doing things.

Fifa’s Club World Cup, the biggest and most disruptive new development in the game for some time, is largely viewed as having come about as the result of one man’s determination to drive change (that man being Gianni Infantino). The process Fifa undertook to establish the tournament has, however, led to legal action and no small amount of rancour over a claimed lack of consultation with competition organisers. (It should be noted there has been less complaint from clubs, some of whom pocketed tens of millions of dollars for taking part.) In this instance, by contrast, Uefa appears to have opted for jaw jaw rather than war war.

The president of Uefa, Aleksander Ceferin, flagged this possible direction in an interview conducted before the Champions League draw in Monaco last month. Asked about the plan for overseas fixtures by Politico, Ceferin said: “We’re not happy but, as much as we checked legally, we don’t have much space here, if the federation agrees, and both federations agreed. But I think that for the future we’ll have to discuss this very seriously, because … fans should watch football at home … We will open this discussion also with Fifa, and with all the federations, because I don’t think it’s a good thing.”

If Uefa’s presumably well-remunerated lawyers weren’t wildly wrong in their calculations then deferral with a chance of dialogue was perhaps the best option Uefa could plump for in the short term. It may best serve its interests in the longer term too. With the contest to control the future of the world’s most popular sport continuing to heat up, it is possible to argue that Uefa is among the most vulnerable to any shift away from the current model of the men’s game. Its tournaments – the European Championship, the Nations League, even the Champions League – are likely to be the first to feel the squeeze should the international calendar take on even more matches in the medium term via changes such as a biennial Club World Cup. Faced with this position, being an organisation that is seen to be listening, and perhaps even collaborative, may well be a good idea.

In the Politico interview Ceferin drew a red line against a biennial Club World Cup, saying: “I wouldn’t agree with that, but I don’t think [Fifa] want to.” That last line goes against much of the reporting on the topic but was of a piece with a more emollient tone as Ceferin rolled back on remarks Uefa had made months before condemning Infantino’s “private political interests” after the Fifa’s president arrived late for his own Congress after touring the Gulf with Donald Trump. Ceferin told Politico the language used had been “a bit overemotional” and that relations with Fifa were “absolutely” in a better place.

Again with the conciliation, again another possible sign of where the balance of power lies. But by behaving constructively, by acting less as a rival and more as a facilitator, Uefa will find itself in tune with another player which could yet weigh in on the future of European football (and by extension the game as a whole): Brussels. The European courts are where much of the battles is being played out, with no ruling more consequential than that involving the European Super League, which questioned the ability of sports governing bodies to act as both regulator and competition organiser without the risk of “abusing” their “dominant position”. The European Commission, meanwhile, is taking more and more interest in ensuring the concept of a “European Sports Model” where open competition (ie promotion and relegation) runs alongside financial solidarity from the top to the bottom of the pyramid.

The European commissioner for intergenerational fairness, youth, culture and sport, Glenn Micallef, made the unusual decision to intervene in the debate over international fixtures last week, describing the plans as betraying supporters and putting the European Sports Model at risk. On Thursday, he spoke again, commending Uefa’s decision to pause and discuss. “This is the right and responsible way to do things; through inclusive dialogue and consultation,” he wrote on social media.

The Commission is the body that initiates Europe’s political direction and if it felt it necessary to intervene to protect the European Sports Model, it could. Such an action would likely throw the existing power structures in football up in the air and being on the right side of any such shift would be to any governing body’s advantage. If Ceferin’s remarks on the issue of international fixtures are correct, it may be we see such matches yet. But while it is unfortunate to lose some battles, sometimes they may help you in fighting a war.

British authorities may have well-founded concerns about the cyber-spying threat from vehicles made in China, but it turns out the country’s manufacturers have security worries of their own.

Insurers have told Chinese carmakers they need certain critical modifications for vehicles on British streets: namely, tougher locking devices to make them harder to steal.

With an average of 11 reported vehicle thefts an hour in the UK, and car crime comparatively rare under Beijing’s strict authoritarian regime, industry sources said it had been a “swift learning curve”.

Additions to cars exported to the UK from China have ranged from the simply mechanical, such as lockable wheel nuts and an extra layer of steel around the car door locks, to software to detect and guard against unauthorised entry.

Sales of Chinese cars have risen sharply in Britain this year, now accounting for about one in 12 of all new cars sold, including those made by MG and electric car firm BYD. New entrants such as Chery, which started to sell its own-brand petrol SUVs this month, have sold about 20,000 new cars in the UK since launching the Omoda and Jaecoo brands here earlier this year.

New models for import are assessed for risk on behalf of insurers, with tests including a two-minute “attack test”, whose results led to a range of Chinese prototypes being beefed up against car thieves.

Ben Townsend, the head of automotive at Thatcham Research, a vehicle risk intelligence company, said: “We’ve worked closely with Chinese vehicle manufacturers advising on vehicle security enhancements for the UK market.

“In China, vehicle crime is not the same challenge we experience in the UK and Europe, so certain anti-theft features – like immobilisers, door shielding to prevent access to internal locking mechanisms, and software-based intrusion detection – haven’t historically been prioritised.”

He added: “These features often don’t require major structural interventions, which means they can be applied to completed new models, and we’ve found Chinese brands to be highly responsive and agile in implementing improvements.”

Chery executives said modifications had been swiftly delivered in the Chinese production process. Factory and other staff typically work a six-day week, on lower wages that have contributed to Chinese cars underpricing western comparators.

Oli Lowe, the UK head of product for Chery UK, said the Chinese manufacturer had dedicated regional research and development centres to get its cars ready for sale here. He said: “Simple but crucial adaptations, such as the addition of locking wheel bolts, ensure that vehicles not only meet local requirements but also deliver enhanced security and customer confidence for our buyers in the UK.”

A spokesperson for BYD, which in two years of UK sales has grown to overtake Tesla, said it had worked with Thatcham to learn about UK theft prevention and had “devoted significant efforts to enhancing vehicle anti-theft performance and insurability in the UK market”.

They added: “We have implemented a wide range of technologies and hardware tailored to local expectations, including advanced anti-theft locking systems and optimisations in vehicle component structures.”

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, reported total vehicle theft in England and Wales rose to 102,000 in the year to the end of March 2025.

Chinese car crime data is not available, and while its official crime statistics are viewed as unreliable, anecdotally vehicle and other theft is perceived as far lower than in Britain.

A spokesperson for International Motors, a UK distributor that imports Xpeng and GWM cars from China, said Korean and Japanese manufacturers had faced similar adjustments when first exporting here years before: “The UK requirements for safety and security are extremely stringent.”

The UK’s most stolen car, however, is one that was once made in Britain: the Ford Fiesta, with more than 4,000 taken last year, according to Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency figures reported by What Car?