The Legal Services Commission has announced the termination of Specialist Support Project contracts with effect from 19 July 2006. The original contracts signed ran until 2007.

For more information, see the policy news story Specialist Support Projects to end early

Is there a list of who these projects are?

It should be in this pdf file from the LSC website SSP agencies

#"%*

Further to the news story above, a campaign to save the Specialist Support Service is underway, see the Rightsnet policy news story Specialist Support Service fight back

With the Legal Services Commission's decision to terminate its Specialist Support Service contracts from July 2006 due to be debated in parliament on 2 February 2006, contract holders are calling for those agencies who have used the service to contact their MP urgently to ask them to attend the debate.

To assist in this, Morgans Solicitors, Specialist Support contract holders in Wales, have produced a proforma letter for agencies to use .... and CPAG have issued a briefing for MPs.

For more info see today's rightsnet policy news story MPs urged to attend parliamentary debate on termination of Specialist Support Service contracts

If you or your organisation have used the lasa specialist support service or any of the other specialist support services we would be very grateful if you could send any MPs that you have contacts with a version of the letter below.

What we are asking the MPs to do is -

attend the close of sitting adjournment debate at 6.30pm on Thursday, 2nd February 2006 in the House of Commons in order to debate the specialist support service cuts; and /or

sign the Early Day Motion 1542, which calls on the Government to restore funding for specialist support and strengthen the provision of legal advice for those in the greatest need.

As time is short we would be very grateful if you could do this as a matter of urgency. Many thanks if you can.

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/lasa_ssp_mp_letter_feb_2006.doc

early day motion -

'LEGAL SERVICES COMMISSION'S DECISION TO END FUNDING FOR SPECIALIST SUPPORT IN ENGLAND AND WALES

That this House condemns the Legal Services Commission's (LSC) recent decision to end all funding of specialist support services in England and Wales from July 2006 despite the outcome of its own review in 2003-04 which recognised the value and importance of specialist support advice, mentoring and training in complex areas of social welfare law for LSC approved agencies working directly with the public; notes that this will mean, in Wales, the end of the Wales Specialist Support Service, which provides expert help and training in housing, welfare benefits and debt, and across England and Wales, the loss of essential advice and training in mental health, community care, employment, HIV/AIDS, immigration and human rights, as well as housing, welfare benefits and debt, provided by acknowledged expert agencies such as the Child Poverty Action Group, Disability Law Service, Citizens Advice, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, Liberty, MIND, Shelter, Terrence Higgins Trust and others; further regrets the implications of this cut in funding for vulnerable clients who are not in a position to employ specialist advisers; and calls on the Government to restore funding for specialist support and strengthen the provision of legal advice for those in the greatest need.'

Fri 03-Feb-06 03:52 PM by shawn

for info on yesterday's debate on the LSC's termination of specialist support funding, see the rightsnet policy news story -

An astonishing and disappointing decision of great significance to the most vulnerable people in society

ps ... If your organisation has used any of the Specialist Support Services, we would be grateful if you could complete a short questionnaire. Completed questionnaires can be faxed back to 0207 247 9924, or emailed to mailto:ssp@lasa.org.uk.

Thankyou for your help.

Many thanks to the many organisations who have completed and returned the questionnaire - we got 126 back within one week - and 140 by this morning.

The Constitutional Affairs Committee are holding a one-off evidence session with the Legal Services Commission this afternoon at 4.15.

It will be asking questions about the withdrawl of specialist support services in England and Wales.

Brian Harvey, Acting Chief Executive of the Legal Services Commission and Richard Collins Executive Director of the Legal Services Commission will be attending.

http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/conaffcom/cac100206pn15.cfm

There was also a debate on the issue last week in the House of Lords -

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds06/text/60208-03.htm#60208-03_star0

And there is an Early Day Motion (No.1542) calling on the government to 'restore funding for specialist support and to strengthen the provision of legal advice for those in greatest need'. If you have valued the work of the specialist support services please ask your local MP/MPs to sign the Early Day Motion.

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=29963&SESSION=875

This site provides live coverage of many of the committees.

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/

Interestingly (in my rather sad-and-i-must-get-out-more opinion), the decision to scrap the Specialist Support Service is stated to be mainly based on the fact of making savings of approximately £3m, with the overall costs of running the Community Legal Service having risen by some £50m in 5 years. (See Parliamentary Questions by Keith Vaz for more information)

In 2000-01, LSC payments for running the CLS were £791.9m, dropping to £734.5m the next year, up to £812.8m the year after that, up to £897.90m the year after that before dropping to a mere £845.90m in 2004-05.

What i find interesting is that over this period, the administrative costs of "simply" running the LSC have risen from £71.6m in 2001-02 (i don't have the earlier annual report) to £96.4m in 2004-05, i.e. their own running costs have gone up by some £25m!!!

Isn't it quite astonishing that the LSC can cut contracts on a fairly arbitary basis to save £3m out of budgetary rises of £50m, when their own costs have risen so dramatically? It would be very interesting to have more information on what "top-slice reviews" are going on within the Commission to reduce this figure. Or am i being naive....

quite astonishing indeed.

from the annual report -
"Our administration budget in 2004/05

We were allocated £95.9m to pay for our
2004/05 administration costs. We carried
forward £1.7m from our 2003/04 budget,
giving us total available cash of £97.6m.
The cash spend for the year was £96.4m.
Our expenditure on a Resource Accounting
and Budgeting (RAB) basis was £93.5m.
Our resource based budget for 2005/06
is £92m."

Curious about this also -

"Pension scheme

During the year we reviewed the funding of
our staff pension scheme to ensure that we
recognise our responsibilities to provide a
good quality scheme. In addition to the
employer contributions, which are 20% of
payroll, we made a further £5m cash payment
into the scheme. In consultation with our
actuaries we intend to increase the employer
contributions to 26% in 2005/06."

Aren't they covered by the Principle Civil Service Pension Scheme?

The full committee hearing can now be found in the archive section of the link i gave above. The suggestion seems to be that cls direct would pick up much of the work of specialist support. However i had understood CLS direct to be a first tier service ie clients contact the service for advice whereas Specialist Support is who first tier agencies contact with particularly complex or unusual cases. Is my understanding broadly correct?
This would explain why in the evidence given it came out that cls direct advisors sometimes contact Specialist Support which seemed to come as some suprise to the the representatives of the lsc.

You're spot on Richard, in noticing the fundamental flaw in the reason and rationale being given for who and what will pick up services no longer provided by SSS.

There is also a reason being floated that as contract holders must be assessed as working at "specialist" QM level (as opposed to QM "general" level for eg), then they should have no need to call such services because they should be specialists themselves anyway.

To raise an equivalence, that would imply that solicitors should never need to call on a barrister for legal opinion cos they should know it all already....

surely legal aid for barristers should be stopped then as well.....

<<<hears wheels grinding in LSC minds>>>...now theres an idea.....

If the LSC rationale is "specialist" level organisations should have no need for the Support services as they should be specialist is true, it ignores the host of "general level with casework" organisations (like ours) who have been allowed to access the service for some time. Our organisation, which is not LSC funded, provides advice services to disabled people in the predominately rural part of East Suffolk. Whilst we do mostly welfare benefits our clients also need access to support in the related areas of community care, housing and human rights law. Without the specialist support services the access to such specialist help in our area is mimimal at best. For example I am unaware of a LSC specialist in Community Care in the whole of East Anglia. Even in Welfare Rights I have used LASA and CPAG support helplines as a aid to clarifying difficult points of law - making me a more efficient and better advocate. As a solicitor (non practicing) I am very aware of the importance of good research and the ability to "bounce" theories off colleagues.

So I have contacted my MP and he has signed the Early Day Motion; I have filled in the questionnaires...what else can I do?

I think the rationale for support in areas of law that arent provided by the agency is that CLS direct can be used. Eg you have a contract or do work in say welfare benefits and debt, but then someone has an immigration case that requires specialist help and there is no provider within easy travel distance for the client then CLS direct can be used. But that doesnt appear to fill the gap for 2nd tier support as you highlight.

Ah - but isn't the logic of that position also that Tribunal Chairs, Commissioners, judges in general, are all more specialist than the barristers, solicitors or WRAs appearing before them; and should be capable of coming to the right conclusion without the benefit of hearing argument or reading submissions - so no need for any legal aid - at all - ever - for anything.

There's money saved, then...er hang on though...(more wheels grinding)...(thinks: jobs at LSC, pensions, mortgages, school fees...)

No. Scrub that. Enough saved on Specialist Support.

Indeed, but then why should the DWP, the Home Office, Local Authourity housing departments etc require the 2nd tier support provided by Appeal Tribunals, County Court, the Asylum and Immigration tribunals and the like. Surely these too can be abolished too

Another strange development in the world of Specialist Support Services - from an LSC press release dated 07.02.06 comes the news that "Recently, the LSC took a difficult decision to end funding, worth £2.3 million for Specialist Support contracts, a service that provides advice to advisors. This came from a budget that funds ad hoc experimental projects."

So it must have been my imagination that these services were mainstreamed by the LSC across the UK from June 1 2004 following the pilot projects?

And there's more. We have just come across the LSC Communications Plan for the release of the Top Slice Review report and recommendations, specifically dealing with termination of the Specialist Support Contracts and Service.

Amongst the key issues highlighted for the LSC are that:

• Concern that the decision to terminate Specialist Support contracts has been made to quickly, without proper consultation with the users of the service.
  
• Specialist Support was subject to heavy positive publicity from the LSC earlier in the year, this decision will appear to contradict their quality and ability as advisors.
  
• Specialist Support subjected to protracted negotiation process, prior to the Top Slice Review - may give rise to claim of legitimate expectation.

thought people might like to know where we've got to with this -

the Early Day Motion (1542) now has 131 signatures - if you have valued the work of the specialist support services please ask your local MP/MPs to sign the Early Day Motion - and thanks to those that have done so already - a link to the Early Day Motion is below

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=29963&SESSION=875

also many thanks for returning the completed questionnaire - lasa alone received 157 replies - the responses are very useful when arguing the case for specialist support

the uncorrected transcript of the evidence given by the LSC about the ending of specialist support at the Constitutional Affairs Committee one-off evidence session has been published - a link to the policy news story is below

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/cgi-bin/publisher/display.cgi?1247-1106-20436+policy

and last but not least some of the specialist support providers have sought legal advice as to the possiblity to judicially reviewing the LSC's decision to stop funding the service - we'll keep you updated on progress as we go along

160 signatures on the Early Day Motion now, whilst the Constitutional Affairs Committee has produced its report following last months evidence session that makes the recommendation that the decision to stop funding for Specialist Support Services should be reconsidered - more information in the rightsnet policy news story \'Major Flaws\' in LSC approach to policy making

Citizens Advice welcomes MPs' report critical of plans to axe specialist legal support services -

'Citizens Advice today renewed pressure on the Legal Services Commission to reverse its decision to axe funding for specialist legal support services in the light of fierce criticism of the move by an influential committee of MPs.

The national charity said there could be no excuse for pressing ahead with the cut to services used by legal aid solicitors, law centres and advice bureaux after the Constitutional Affairs Committee told the LSC it must look at the decision again.

Some 19 expert agencies including Citizens Advice, CPAG, Liberty, MIND Shelter and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants are currently contracted by the LSC to provide specialist advice in complex areas of social welfare law such as welfare benefits, debt, employment, housing and immigration to front line advisers.

The Constitutional Affairs Select Committee’s report, published today, notes that the LSC decided to end these contracts, which had received very positive feedback, after a short consultation and with only six months notice. Evidence to the Committee revealed a flawed consultation process in which the option of closing down the service was not mentioned.

Welcoming the committee’s report, Citizens Advice Chief Executive David Harker said:

'The message from the committee is loud and clear. The decision to cut all funding for the highly successful specialist support service was taken in great haste and without proper consultation, and those who will pay the price if this decision stands are some of the most vulnerable people in society.

The Lord Chancellor has promised the committee that he will personally look at both the decision and the process by which it was made. We hope he will do this quickly, taking into full account their findings, and that this will lead to a change of heart on the part of the LSC.'


More than 150 MPs have backed an Early Day Motion calling on the Government to restore funding for specialist support and to strengthen the provision of legal advice for those in greatest need.'

News just in that the LSC have agreed to withdraw the termination notices as a result of the Judicial Review proceedings that were underway and enter a full consultation on the future the SSP Scheme.

More news as it becomes available.

for more info see the policy news section of rightsnet @

LSC revokes termination of funding for specialist support services: Decision follows support from MPs and threat of Judical Review proceedings

just to say thank you to all the organisations who completed questionnaires and/or contacted their MP's (and thanks to those MP's too!)

your support was invaluable

onwards - ever onwards