 Geography of Advice ( 340kb) - An overview of the challenges facing the community legal service
Summary
The provision of advice and legal services has been transformed over the past decade. The passage of new legislation granting citizens new rights, combined with the introduction of contracting and targeting of services, the reform of civil procedure and eligibility for legal aid, have changed both the profile and nature of legal needs and the availability of appropriate services. Millions of people now have new rights in law, but limited means or ability to achieve rights in practice.
The key product of the current Government’s reforms has been the Community Legal Service (CLS) – a loose structure for the co-ordination of sectors, services and funding. This report looks at how well this structure is working and fulfilling the objective of delivering access to justice through publicly funded legal services, and considers the issues facing the CLS within the wider policy context of developing access to justice, such as tribunals and eligibility criteria.
The report argues that there is great potential in the CLS, and credits the progress that has been made to improve access to justice through the CLS. New partnerships have the potential to make a valuable contribution to service provision and understanding local needs. Consumers can now have much greater confidence in the quality of publicly funded advice.
However, the report also identifies serious problems, which must be addressed for the CLS to be sustainable. Advice deserts are opening up, and the infrastructure of the CLS is underdeveloped and unsustainable. Fragmentation and desertification are posing serious challenges to the long-term viability of the CLS, and providers are being discouraged and demoralised by the dead weight of unnecessary bureaucracy.
These problems are clearly demonstrated by evidence from Citizens Advice Bureaux, the Legal Services Commission and elsewhere. This report presents an overview of CAB evidence from each region on the adequacy of service provision under the CLS, and places this evidence in context of the major challenges posed by delivering access to justice, such as the scale of unmet advice needs and the challenge of ensuring appropriate eligibility for public funding. It is backed up by a survey of Citizens Advice Bureaux, which showed that:
- 39 per cent percent of bureaux thought that their CAB was in an ‘‘advice desert’’
- 68 per cent of bureaux report difficulties finding CLS Solicitors who can deal with immigration cases
- 58 per cent with family law cases
- 60 per cent with housing cases
- 27 per cent with employment law cases
- 10 per cent with welfare benefit law cases.
The report is divided into three parts; Part 1 looks at key policy challenges facing the CLS scheme in respect of meeting citizens advice needs, Part 2 takes a snapshot look at services on a geographical basis and questions whether service planning mechanisms are delivering appropriate access to advice, and Part 3 explores where the CLS should go from here to fulfil its objective of delivering access to justice.
The report concludes that there is a need for greater transparency in decisionmaking within the CLS and Government policy about public funding of legal services, that partnerships need more support to fulfil their role, that crucially the LSC must provide for greater flexibility in the contracting regime, and that the Government must commit itself to greater capacity building in the CLS for the initiative to be sustainable in the longer term. Overall there is a need for:
- policy and practice concerning the CLS to be more strongly and effectively linked with government policies for tackling social and financial exclusion and improving community cohesion
- the development of a more holistic approach to the delivery of legal advice services
- support for the CLS from Government through policies to widen access to justice, for example appropriate eligibility levels, review of court fees and the principle of full cost recovery, and funding for tribunal representation.
Social Policy contact: James Sandbach Social.policy@citizensadvice.org.uk
Geography of Advice ( 340kb) - An Overview of the Challenges Facing the Community Legal Service
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