2.Main Content
The CLS Strategy
Following consultation last year, the LSC has published its strategy for 2006-2011 in the document "Making Legal Rights a Reality."
The strategy resembles the earlier consultation document in its proposals and shows little reflection of the more than 260 consultation responses.
The direction of the strategy is summarised as 'one where all legally aided social welfare advice and representation is provided by a combination of Centres, Networks and CLS Direct subject to continuing evaluation to ensure quality, access and value.'
Advice and Representation
Whereas the consultation paper proposed piloting Community Legal and Advice Centres and Networks (CLACs and CLANs), the strategy proposes rolling them out without any piloting. These services will be commissioned "in locations where clients need them most". The strategy claims that the need for advice is broadly the same across England and Wales, and that local authorities can provide information on any relevant local factors. The LSC will negotiate directly with local authorities to decide on the services to be provided. In social welfare law they will commission services "in bundles that recognise the multiple nature of clients’ problems." The core social welfare bundle will include community care, debt, employment, housing and welfare benefits.
CLS Direct will be expanded to deliver "a large proportion of LSC funded information, diagnosis and basic advice” and “a significant proportion of specialist legal advice on social welfare law".
The LSC suggest that there could be up to 75 CLACs, in those local authority areas with more than 50,000 benefit claimants and a high population density, although the actual number will be less than this.
CLANs will serve less densely populated and larger geographical areas, operating at county level where practicable. The LSC has identified 36 areas for Networks to be established over the next five years, although this number is described as ‘a baseline rather than a maximum.’
The implications for providers are clear. 'Following the tendering process, we may reduce or not renew some of our other social welfare contracts from April 2007 where we consider that the Centre or Network will be supplying the necessary services.'
Comment
The strategy appears to reflect a hardening of attitude by the LSC, and a growing conviction that it knows where it wants to go and how it wants to get there. The LSC clearly feels that it needs to drive change through and that suppliers as presently constituted represent more of a problem than a solution. It seems that it will be the LSC and local authorities that will decide whether an area needs a CLAC or a CLAN, without any particular reference to the views of suppliers, users, or the local CLSP.
So far the strategy has met with scepticism from private practice, the NfP sector and local authorities. We watch with interest to see how persuasive the LSC can be.
The strategy can be found at: http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/docs/civil_contracting/CLSStrategyfinal15032006.pdf
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