Case study: Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit

Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit (ATLEU) works with people affected by sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, forced labour and criminal exploitation. It provides free, specialist legal advice and representation to survivors, including formal recognition as victims of trafficking, access to housing and welfare support, protection from detention or removal, and enforcement of employment rights and compensation. ATLEU also uses its clients’ casework as a foundation for strategic litigation and policy influencing, holding the state to account and shaping how the law protects survivors. 

ATLEU has a flexible three-year Strengthening Justice grant of £230,000 under our 2025–30 strategy.

ATLEU’s work demonstrates how the law can be a powerful tool for social justice when it is rooted in lived experience and combined with long‑term, community-centred partnership. Rather than starting from what the law currently allows, their approach begins with the change survivors want and creates legal strategies with them to achieve this. 

ATLEU’s accountability to the community it serves is grounded in shared decision-making. Through its Changemakers group, survivors shape campaigns, organisational priorities and policy recommendations, including speaking in Parliament and influencing debates on trafficking and asylum systems.

For example, survivors’ experiences of being unable to access the legal support they need for safety have driven ATLEU’s strategic legal challenges to the legal means test. It has pushed for new guidance for prison staff on identifying victims, and reframed survivors as rights-holders through litigation, parliamentary evidence and national media work. ATLEU’s work in this area is not only securing justice for individuals, but is also shifting wider policy and practice and public narratives around trafficking and exploitation.

Over time, ATLEU has deepened its commitment to accountability by investing in survivor employment and leadership at the organisation. Their creation of a Community Lawyer role has strengthened relationships with ​‘by and for’ organisations, resulting in sustained and meaningful partnerships.