Retirement Announcement: Celebrating the Careers of Dom Findlay and Chris Lowry

Dom Findlay: A Career Built on Empathy, Experience and Advocacy

Dom’s commitment to social justice began long before his professional career. As an A-level student at Yeovil College, he volunteered teaching literacy to adults who were unable to read. During a gap year in 1978, he worked at a Simon Community night shelter in Oxford, supporting homeless people before going on to study English and Related Literature at the University of York.

Life experience profoundly shaped Dom’s understanding of homelessness. During a period of severe mental ill health while at university, he experienced homelessness himself. This experience informed a lifelong commitment to supporting others facing similar circumstances.

Dom entered paid employment in the voluntary sector in the mid-1980s through South West Housing Aid in Taunton. His early career also included housing advice roles with South East Housing Aid in London and a Lay Advocacy Project in Bristol before joining Shelter’s Bristol Housing Aid Centre in 1987. During this period, he helped secure funding for homelessness projects in Gloucestershire and worked alongside tenants’ groups opposing large-scale transfers of council housing stock to housing associations.

Alongside his paid work, Dom volunteered with the Aled Richards Trust, supporting people living with HIV during a time when stigma and misunderstanding were widespread.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Dom worked across Cumbria and Gloucestershire in a variety of housing advice and homelessness projects, helping young people, families and vulnerable adults navigate housing crises, benefits systems and legal challenges.

His work was rarely dull. While working in the Forest of Dean Young Single Homelessness Project, Dom found himself in dispute with landlords he believed were exploiting vulnerable tenants. Following threats against him and his family, he moved to Stroud and continued his work elsewhere in Gloucestershire.

Dom became a respected court representative and caseworker, helping countless people facing possession proceedings and homelessness. He later supervised advisers in Shelter Gloucestershire before joining Gloucester Law Centre in 2012, which merged with Wiltshire Law Centre to form Southern England Law Centre in 2025.

Reflecting on his career, Dom attributes much of his success to his neurodivergence and his ability to learn from the people around him. He is particularly grateful to the colleagues who supported him throughout his journey and to the many clients who placed their trust in him.

Dom wishes to thank everyone he has worked alongside over almost fifty years, remembering absent friends and former colleagues who are no longer with us. Looking back over decades of housing work, he leaves us with one final question:

“Where have all the houses gone?”

Chris Lowry: Excellence in Advice, Advocacy and Legal Representation

 Chris Lowry’s career in advice work began in 1992 as a volunteer trainee adviser at Thamesdown Citizens Advice Bureau in Swindon. What started as a voluntary role quickly developed into a distinguished professional career spanning more than three decades.

Between 1992 and 2001, Chris progressed within Citizens Advice, including Money Adviser, Money Advice Manager and Legal Services Manager. During this period, he represented clients in county courts, magistrates’ courts and tribunals, dealing with debt, mortgage possession, bankruptcy, welfare benefits and housing matters. Chris also served on the National Committee of the Institute of Money Advisers between 1996 and 1999, helping shape professional standards within the advice sector.

In 2002, Chris joined Reading Borough Council as a Housing Adviser.

Later that year, Chris joined Shelter’s Gloucester office, where he would spend the next eleven years, becoming a Senior Housing Adviser. He managed legal aid contracts, represented clients in complex housing cases and became a familiar presence in Gloucestershire’s courts.

One of Chris’s most significant contributions came in 2003 when he established the Gloucester Court Duty Scheme, ensuring that people facing possession proceedings could access expert legal advice and representation at court. The scheme was subsequently funded through legal aid and continues to support vulnerable residents today.

Chris later managed advice services at CCP in Cheltenham before moving to Shearer & Co Solicitors and later joining Wiltshire Law Centre (now Southern England Law Centre), where he has worked since 2021.

Alongside his professional work, Chris pursued legal studies at the University of the West of England, graduating with an LLB (Hons) in Law in 2000 before completing the Legal Practice Course with honours in 2011.

Among his many achievements, Chris takes particular pride in:

• Being the first adviser to rely on the landmark Norgan judgment in Swindon County Court immediately after it was handed down.
• Successfully representing clients in two appeal cases: Gloucester Housing Association v Phelps and C&G v Frasca.
• Successfully defending a client facing eviction from a mobile home, a case in which the claim was dismissed after trial and where the presiding Circuit Judge personally commended Chris on his cross-examination skills.