For anyone interested, here is an 8-page word document briefing about the latest CLS consultation.

Any thoughts, gratefully received.

CLS consultation briefing

I have just read the document. On first reading one concern seems to leap off the page at me. One proposal seems to be to 'encourage' those who would not qualify for legal help (or civil legal aid) to seek assistance from the profit sector for casework (i.e. appeals).

We already get referrals from local CAB's who do not take on cases were the client is not green form eligible and it would be very disturbing if we as an LA were 'discouraged' from taking these cases on.

What would a solicitor charge for the time spent at the hearing, including waiting times, delays due to hearings overunning etc? How many solicitors are experienced enough in social security law? How will clients know at the outset of case what the final fee will be? If there is a government set cap will this discourage solicitors from taking cases on? Many of the people we see are still on relatively low incomes and could certainly not afford solicitors fees and thus would be discouraged from carrying on with their appeals.

What do others think?

Nevip makes a good point.

I have always believed that the structure of Social Security disputes and appeals was deliberately intended to encourage the vast majority of disputes/appeals to be legally non chargeable. This is why claimants have direct access to tribunals and that lay representatives have full rights of audience. There will always be of course some cases where important points of law are at issue and I believe it was always intended that such cases would be legally chargeable to ensure the appropriate level of legal expertise was applied (but also that chargeable cases would be very exceptional). This fairly straightforward approach seems to have been lost due to four factors.

Since reform of lagal aid started, the Lord chancellors dept in their drive to reduce the legal aid costs seems to treat Social security Law like other law areas (which are mainly or wholly chargeable) and places ever increasing restrictions on them. These restrictions seem to have affected agencies who do not charge their clients as well as the firms that do.

The wish to impose performance quality levels has also caused problems. Not suprisingly, quality standards have been written from the point of view of legal practitioners. Unfortunately when this is applied to the small, charitable and volutary sector, it becomes a costly administration imposition. It has significantly added to costs when just at the time when many areas of funding dried up. There does not seem to have been a significant increase of advice quality just an acceleration of agencies closing who cannot cover costs.

Too many fuinding regimes (particularly the lottery) seem to base the award to cover costs of start up and establishing the service then to withdraw funding on the obvious assumption that the service can be "self-financing". As Nevip points out this is impossible for the advice sector whose clients are benefit recipients. Its difficult to see how this point could be more obvious. Benefit recipients do not have disposable means to fund legal actions. So haw can advice agencies be put into this ludicrous position.

There seems to be an assumption by the lawmakers that creating a law/regulation will ensure it is carried out. There seems to be no recognition of the actual position that decision making varies from barely average to crap. This is despite years of audit and research that shows which areas are poor at DM. And if the lawmakers do not understand how poor tha administration of benefits is, then it is not suprising that they seem to see no value in advice practioners.

Until I see someone from the CLS recognise that they cannot treat a CAB the same as a proffessional law firm or someone senior in the DWP to realise there is a problem I can only see the publics ability to get benefit advice dropping and dropping and.......

Something that strikes me about the proposals to concentrate face-to-face services in Neighbourhood Renewal Areas is that this could serve to further marginalise Legal Aid, both in terms of priorities for public spending and in public perception of the worth of legal aid.

Already, the combination of income eligibility levels being set so low that only the very poorest people actually qualify for legal aid and the scarcity of legal aid practitioners in many areas of the country means that the vast majority of the population probably don't even know the scheme exists anymore (and if they do know about it, it is usually in relation to a "fat-cat lawyers scamming the courts" type of tabloidism) - against this backdrop, moves that essentially further reduce geographical coverage of the scheme must be viewed with some concern. We've already seen the way that poverty has to be talked about under the social exclusion label for politicians to be feel confident about announcing policies to syphon money towards the poorest in society. The message here would be the implication that it's only run-down areas that need free legal advice and access to justice, everyone else can phone up for a leaflet before being shunted towards a fee-earner.

Against this concern, though, is the obvious practical benefit of siting face-to-face services in those areas of the country that are receiving large amounts of regeneration funding already, thus increasing the likelihood of other funding becoming availabe for the provision of advice services e.g. they're chasing the money.

Somewhat ironically, law centres were originally set up because the legal aid scheme was failing to meet the needs of poor and disadvantaged people - now the circle is complete and the LSC are proposing to create CLACs which, from the description provided in the paper, would appear to be essentially law centres. It's just a pity that they'll be such an exclusive club that unless you happen to live in one of the 88 poorest local authority areas in the country, you won't be able to use one....

Just want to remind everyone that the closing date for this consultation is next Friday 14 October - for more information, see Making Legal Rights a Reality, copies of consultation paper on right hand side of page.

It is really important for anyone delivering legal advice and information related to social welfare law to respond to this consultation, as it sets out the strategy for how services will be delivered byway of the Community Legal Service over at least the next 3 years or so.

So whether you have a SQM contract or not, there are potential implications for the Quality Mark at General level, the LSC working with other funders, including a key role for local authorities, to co-ordinate funding streams, implications for Neighbourhood Renewal funding and Local Strategic Partnerships, as well as much much more.

Again, any thoughts that people have would be gratefully received. I will post Lasa's response in due course, although this will probably not be finished until more or less the closing date.

The silence is deafening - does no-one really have any thoughts about this? I must admit to being surprised (and not a little disappointed).

Been involved in a lot of local consultation in relation to this.
The general feeling is that changes will be introduced no matter what we say. It's the usual dressed up cuts exercise but they've cleverly ditched the expresions targetting those who need help most etc with more clever expressions. It will lead to an even bigger bunfight, with profit and NfP organisations scrapping over what little amount of cash there is left in the pot.
They wouldn't have spent thousands preparing this in the first place if it wasn't going to save the government money.

I understand your "sceptical" views, Stephen, and I do tend to agree that much of it will be implemented not matter what we say (in London, CLSPs have had direct LSC support withdrawn 12 months ago)...but, we have been assured that suggestions as to how the strategy could be implemented at a local level will be given serious consideration.

I'm not so sure it's about cuts per se as shifting priorities within a fixed budget as to where the money is spent i.e. more telephone services, face-to-face services only in Neighbourhood Renewal Areas, less monitoring and measurement of quality standards, no CLSP support, broader specialisms within contracts, etc etc.

Fancy swapping responses, so we can get a feel of different reactions, ect - could even post them up here if people wanted?

Here is a copy of the response from London Advice Services Alliance to the Making Legal Rights a Reality consultation.

Lasa response

If anyone else wants to share their response to the consultation, please forward me a word document and I can take care of the rest.

Wed 19-Oct-05 08:24 AM by ken

assuming this works - here's a link to the Law Centre Federation response.

jj

http://www.lawcentres.org.uk/cgi/publisher/display.cgi?1622-9105-56827+brief

Thanks jj, hadn't got around to that one.

If anyone is interested, I've also uploaded responses from the following (these are all word documents):

- Advice UK response;

- Brent Private Tenants’ Rights Group response;

- Child Poverty Action Group response;

- London Youth Advice Forum response;

- Southwark CLSP response;

- Youth Access response;

Thu 27-Oct-05 10:49 AM by Paul Treloar

And the Advice Services Alliance response is now available, via their website, pdf copy ASA response

And the Age Concern response, word document, is available here Age Concern England response