Community Legal Advice Centres & Networks

On this page:

Aims and objectives
Statement on the future of Joint Commissioning
List of potential centres and networks published
Where are we currently working?
Gateshead Community Legal Advice Service re-tender
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.

Statement on the future of Joint Commissioning

We have published a statement on the future of joint commissioning. The statement makes our plans for future Community Legal Advice centres and networks clear, in order to give those providers planning to bid for Social Welfare Law contracts in 2010 as much certainty as possible about the duration of the contract.

The statement and a Q and A can be found under Documents.

List of potential centres and networks published

We agreed in our settlement with The Law Society to publish the list of areas 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 with these local authorities:

Barking and Dagenham
Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan and Bridgend - please see joint statement from the LSC and WAG in the documents panel
East Riding of Yorkshire
Gloucestershire - please see the statement in the documents panel
Manchester
Sunderland - please see the statement in the documents panel
Wakefield
West Sussex

Information on progress in the areas where we are working to jointly commission services can be found in the documents panel. We will update this monthly.

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):

Gateshead Community Legal Advice Service re-tender

We are working with Gateshead Council on the re-tendering process for a Community Legal Advice Service in Gateshead. We are currently consulting on the draft service specification and Equalities Impact Assesment, which can be found in the documents panel.

A consultation event for the Draft Service Specification will be held at 10.30 pm on Friday 26th February 2010. If you would like to attend the event please return the pro forma in the documents panel to Micheal Fawole at LSC South Tyneside, Berkeley Way, Viking Business Park, Jarrow, NE31 1SF, DX NO 742350 Jarrow2 via post, fax or email michael.fawole@legalservices.gov.uk no later than Monday 22nd February 2010.

All comments on the draft service specification and Equalities Impact Assessment must be recieved by 4pm Friday 12th March 2010.

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

Visit the CLS>Tenders page for invitations to tender.

Please contact the civil policy team with any queries.

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Last updated: 18 February 2010