Community Legal Advice Centres & Networks

On this page:

Aims and objectives
List of potential centres and networks published
Where are we currently working?
Gloucestershire CLA Network
Stockport CLA Network
Barking and Dagenham CLA Centre 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.

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 - please see joint statement from the LSC and WAG in the documents panel
East Riding of Yorkshire
Gloucestershire - please see the statement below
Manchester
Stockport - please see the statement below
Sunderland - please see the statement in the documents panel
Wakefield - draft service specification is now out for consultation. Please follow the link.
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):

Gloucestershire CLA Network

The five councils in Gloucestershire working together to jointly procure community legal advice services across the county have agreed to defer the tendering of these services for the immediate future.

Following extensive discussions between the councils and the LSC, it has been agreed that it would be more appropriate to defer the tendering of the service contract until 2012.
This will allow time to establish a clearer and more up to date picture of both local need and current service provision.

A full statement on the decision can be found in the Documents panel on the right hand side of the page.

Stockport CLA Network

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council and the Legal Services Commission continue to have fruitful discussions on the development of a Community Legal Advice Network in the area.

Work is being currently undertaken to develop a needs analysis and service model which will be consulted on in the next few months.
However both parties will not be in a position to tender for a CLA Network by 2010 as originally indicated.
Further details will be provided as discussions progress

Barking and Dagenham CLA Centre tender

We are pleased to announce that we intend to invite interested parties to bid for the Barking and Dagenham CLA Centre contract in April.

Further information will be published on both the LSC and London Borough of Barking & Dagenham (LBBD) websites in the coming weeks.
All tender documentation will be made available from the LBBD website.

In advance of opening the tender process we would like to invite comments on the Initial Equalities Impact Assessment (IEIA) that has been produced by the LSC.

The IEIA can be found in the Documents panel on the right hand side of this page.
The IEIA should be read in conjunction with the Needs Analysis for Barking and Dagenham document on the LBBD website.

Please send all comments to Kemi Togun by 12 pm on Thursday 11 June 2009.

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.

>back to top

Last updated: 26 June 2009