Strategy and impact: Building the foundations for a fairer UK
Our strategy 2025-28 is focused on creating the conditions for lasting change: strengthening understanding and use of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR), building a stronger movement for rights-based change, and creating pathways for people and organisations to hold decision-makers to account.
We work with people and organisations across the UK to make ESCR practical and relevant to the issues communities face every day. Through research, training, resources, advocacy and movement-building, we help translate rights from international commitments into tools that can be used to challenge injustice and demand change.
1) Maximising the impact of collective action
Building a strong, inclusive movement for ESCR across the UK.
By 2028, this means we will:
- Build the capacity of a wide range of stakeholders to generate momentum for ESCR and take action for positive change.
- Foster bold, innovative coalitions that drive meaningful, long-term change.
Outcome: A growing, inclusive, and connected movement for ESCR across the UK, with increasing strength, capacity, and influence to drive sustained positive change.
2) The path towards a fairer, more equal and just society
Shaping a collective and realistic vision of a fairer, more equal and just UK, where ESCR are upheld and celebrated, providing an essential part of the foundation.
By 2028, this means we will:
- Show why and how ESCR are central to achieving a fairer, more equal and just society.
- Develop credible pathways to get us there.
Outcome: Consensus and momentum are building around a collective vision for a fairer, more equal, and just UK where ESCR are recognised as foundational, with credible pathways actively developed and championed.
3) Making rights real in law and practice
Securing legal recognition and real-world protection for ESCR.
By 2028, this means we will:
- Advance efforts to ensure that ESCR are relevant, responsive, rooted in, and experienced in the lived realities of people in the UK.
- Continue to hold the UK governments and public authorities accountable for their existing human rights obligations under international law and push back against regression.
- Work to embed ESCR into domestic legal frameworks and ensure their practical implementation within the UK legal system.
- Explain how violations of people’s rights affect their everyday lives by focusing on specific issues and the groups of people affected.
Outcome: Tangible progress is made towards embedding ESCR within UK legal frameworks and public policies, with strengthened accountability mechanisms and growing recognition of ESCR’s impact on people’s daily lives.
To make ESCR real across the UK, we believe rights need to be incorporated into domestic law and embedded in everyday decision-making.
Our approach is grounded in five principles:
- Rights knowledge – ensuring people understand their rights and how to use them.
- Rights frameworks – creating effective legal protections and accessible routes to remedy.
- Rights resourcing – ensuring rights are properly and proactively resourced.
- Rights accountability – making decision-makers responsible for respecting and protecting rights.
- Rights enjoyment – ensuring people can experience their rights in practice and have a voice in how they are protected.
Together, these principles provide a practical basis for building a fairer and more just UK.
Read the full Route to Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Justice document →
Our impact
Our impact is not only about individual campaigns, projects or policy changes. It is also about the capacity and collective power built through our work: people who are more confident in using their rights, organisations better equipped to advocate for change, and a stronger network of people working towards a fairer UK. It is about setting the foundations for system-wide change to take shape .
We worked with IVAR to assess the difference Just Fair is making and they found we were doing the following:
1) Maximising the impact of collective action
Building a strong, inclusive movement for ESCR across the UK.
Just Fair brings people and organisations together to build shared understanding, confidence and practical capacity to use ESCR. Through the UK ESCR Network and our wider partnerships, we create spaces for learning, exchange and collective action, connecting organisations across sectors and across the UK.
“With Just Fair’s proactive support and with the ESCR Network as a fantastic template for expanding ESCR advocacy, we have been able to really incorporate ESCR into our work and introduce it to other charities, orgs, and policymakers we work with.”
2) The path towards a fairer, more equal and just society
Shaping a collective and realistic vision of a fairer, more equal and just UK, where ESCR are upheld and celebrated, providing an essential part of the foundation.
Just Fair helps build a shared understanding of ESCR as relevant to people’s everyday lives — from poverty and housing to food, inequality and political participation. By showing how rights can help us understand injustice and imagine alternatives, we help shape a collective vision of a fairer UK.
“I tend to think of human rights in international policy issues and not applied to domestic issues, this has taught me not to!”
3) Making rights real in law and practice
Securing legal recognition and real-world protection for ESCR.
Just Fair strengthens the visibility, credibility and use of ESCR in decision-making and accountability spaces. We provide expertise, coordinate civil society voices and bring lived experience into national and international processes — including the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ review of the UK.
“We were very impressed with the UK ESCR Network on several levels, not only with the quality of the information that helped us to understand the critical ESCR issues, the wonderful coordination of the CSOs and individuals working in these areas, but also with the way in which the voices of people with lived experience were widely heard.”
rEAD OUR IMPACT REPORT
We worked with IVAR to assess the difference Just Fair is making and understand where our contribution is strongest. The review brought together evidence from across our work and feedback from our stakeholders and partners.