Community Legal Advice Centres & Networks

On this page:

Aims and objectives
List of potential centres and networks published
Where are we currently working?
Seeking legal advice?
For more information

Aims and objectives

Community Legal Advice centres and networks aim to:

enable people to protect their fundamental rights and sort out legal disputes
tackle disadvantage and promote social inclusion
deliver legal advice services to local communities according to local needs and priorities
provide quality integrated legal advice services ranging from basic information to representation in court, which offer value for money and are supported by co-ordinated funding
be independent of funders and government
bring services to clients who do not currently access legal services.

Accessing legal aid

Centres and networks will combine our funding and knowledge with that of local authorities and other funders to jointly buy services that better meet the needs of local people.

They will provide access to face to face legal advice from basic advice to specialist representation. The advice is in the five social welfare law categories:

community care
debt
employment
housing
welfare benefits.

List of potential centres and networks published

We agreed in our settlement with The Law Society to publish the list of areas (see Documents) where we are in discussions with local authorities about setting up Community Legal Advice centres and networks before 1 April 2010.

See Documents for the list. This is a closed list and we will not be looking to set up other services before 1 April 2010.

However our settlement agrees that we can work with other local authorities for services opening after this date. This can include running a tendering process before 1 April 2010. If this happens we will announce these areas as soon as we have agreement from the local authority to do so.

Where are we currently working?

We are discussing the possibility of jointly commissioning a centre or network that would be operational before April 2010 with these local authorities:

Barking and Dagenham
Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan and Bridgend
East Riding of Yorkshire
Gloucestershire
Manchester
Stockport
Sunderland
Wakefield
West Sussex

We have worked with the relevant local authorities to jointly commission and open Community Legal Advice Centres in the following areas (click on the links to go to each Centre's website - Hull's website is currently in development):

Seeking legal advice?

Community Legal Advice can help if you are eligible for legal aid.

Call the helpline now on 0845 345 4345.

Calls cost no more than 4p per minute from a BT landline but calls from mobiles are usually more. Worried about the cost? Ask an advisor to call you back.

The helpline has a translation service if you would like advice in a language other than English or Welsh.

For more information

See Documents for:

the list of potential areas for centres and networks
a Q&A.

Visit the CLS>Tenders page for invitations to tender.

Please contact the civil policy team with any queries.

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Last updated: 22 October 2008