Half of all CABx could close

The Law Gazette reports Gillian Guy, Citizens Advice CEO, as stating “The overwhelming majority of frontline caseworkers say that it will be impossible to provide a specialist service, while over half say that it may be impossible to continue providing any advice service at all”, due to proposals to cut legal aid.

The report claims that half of the 3,500 CAB advice centres could close. It’s also reported that another CAB source told the Gazette that, although LASPO is still working its way through the Lords, they believe that removing welfare advice from legal aid is a ‘done deal’.

Cash crisis could close half of CABs - The Law Gazette

A special mention for the pillock in the comments section after the article - Doomcop.  There’s always one on every website!

Citizens Advice has today published a report, Out of scope, out of mind: who really loses from legal aid reform, which says that ‘legal aid cuts will make it almost impossible for many Citizens Advice Bureaux to carry on providing specialist advice, leaving tens of thousands of people with nowhere to turn with serious but everyday legal problems that could see them homeless, jobless and without any income’.

I hate looking like a wet blanket - or possibly devil’s advocate - but very few of these cases look much different from the ones that we deal with in my CAB on a daily basis: and we have never had a CLS contract. We couldn’t contribute to this study at all, like many other Bureaux in a similar position, as we had no examples to give. In the last year for which we have statistics, we had entries totalling slightly over half a million pounds in our “wins and gains” book: ET awards, benefit awards, overpayments and debts written off, and so on.
Our only problem in this field is that there is and has been now for several years only one solicitor in our town doing civil legal aid, and that in family work only, which makes it tricky if the other half of the relationship is already with that firm. But, of course, that will be even worse under the new rules, as most of the issues we see in family disputes are around children.
I’m not denying or belittling the problem; but I don’t think you can really say that legal aid is the only way to do these things.

It is, perhaps, the potential result of funding cuts but that funding comes from the legal aid budget.  I agree that the ‘legal’ element is little different, in most cases, from the generality of work carried out by other advice agencies.

Perhaps also to play devils advocate - LSC funding may be an alternative way to fund ‘general advice’ in specific areas of social welfare law. But there may also be a valuable debate about what constitutes ‘generalist’ and ‘specialist’ advice.

When I worked in CABx they had a poster which said ‘no problem to big or to small’. But in practice many problems were to big for CAB advisers to deal with because of their legal or adminisatrative complexity in practice. So for example in areas like family law or immigration CAB would never presume to give more than basic information whereas advisers ought to be able to give good quality and fairly in depth advice on debt or welfare benefits. But at what point does the level of advice required go beyong the competence of a generalist adviser to deal with?

At what point should an adviser or their supervisor etc say ‘this problem is to complex the client needs to be referred to our specialist / X other organisation / there is no organisation available that can give the required level of advice?