1. Introduction and summary
This briefing provides an initial view from Citizens Advice on the review of the Community Legal Service (CLS). It covers
- the key issues which the review should consider,
- key problems where the CLS does not appear to be adequately meeting needs for advice and representation in particular areas;
- the wider policy context of promoting access to justice and human rights in which the effectiveness of the CLS should be judged and in relation to which the CLS should have clearer objectives in future.
Citzens Advice welcomes the review of the CLS. Whilst Citizens Advice has previously supported the development of the Community Legal Service, including the new contractual regime as offering the prospect of a better deal for people needing advice, the way in which the system of publicly funded legal services is managed by the Legal Services Commission is beginning to show worrying signs of weakness. Such as
- withdrawal of advice providers, particularly from the legal profession
- growing problems for clients obtaining legal advice on particular issues or in rural areas
- lack of capacity to respond quickly to changes in local demand, or changes in citizens’ rights.
- very low levels of confidence amongst Citizens Advice Bureaux with the effectiveness of the present system at improving access to advice, for those who need it, and tackling social exclusion.
The review of the CLS should
- Take account of the changing context in which legal advice services are planned and delivered and come up with proposals for change to the present system which are more responsive, sustainable and innovative and fit for the future;
- Result in a refocusing of the CLS objectives, including contractual objectives, towards improving access to advice and takling social exclusion. In this context a review of the approach to monitoring contracts will be vital if advice providers are to have the right incentives to remain involved with the CLS. Citizens Advice fears that without a fundamental recasting of the contractual objectives and monitoring regime too many advice service providers will pull out of the system.
- Not take place in a vacuum – Government must look at policies such as full cost recovery and financial elibility for legally aided advice which seem too often to deny people access to justice.
The rest of this briefing looks at the following areas:
- the key issues the review should consider
- the role of the CAB service in delivering access to justice
- the effectiveness of CLSPs
- whether the CLS is adequately meeting needs
- the impact of the CLS on advice service providers
Citizens Advice would like to emphasise that this is an initial briefing on the CLS review and key issues which should be addressed by it. We welcome comments from CABx on the messages included in this briefing to assist us to compile our formal submission to the review of the CLS, the terms of reference for which can be found in the Appendix.
Please send any comments on this briefing by end October 2003 to Teresa Perchard, Director of Policy at Citizens Advice.
2. Key issues for the review of the Community Legal Service
Citizens Advice has welcomed and played an active part in the creation of the Community Legal Service, and the implementation of many of the Access to Justice Act reforms. Under the LSC’s new contracting system, 244 CABx and 150 other advice agencies and Law Centres now have LSC contracts.
Prior to the creation of the CLS we had long pushed for a better solution to the volatility of legal aid services, poor quality of publicly funded legal services, and insufficient focus on social welfare law. The civil legal aid system suffered from the lack of strategic vision to establish a joined up advice network appropriate to meet the needs of citizens in an increasingly complex world. Citizens Advice expected franchising would be a better method of providing predictability, diversity and choice in legal aid planning by providers and a means of producing a common quality mark, but with sufficient flexibility and safeguards to enable providers to respond appropriately to local needs.
Citizens Advice very much welcomes the review of the CLS. It is noted that this will look at the effectiveness of Community Legal Service Partnerships (CLSPs); the impact of the CLS on delivery of legal advice services and operational issues such as management information. (see appendix for the Terms of Reference).
From Citizens Advice perspective the review is very timely for a number of reasons:
- The opportunity to learn from experience
- Partners involved in the CLS have now had 3 years of experience, which should be harnessed to identify strategic issues for future development so that the CLS can be improved to meet its full potential;
- The legal services and advice systems are in the spotlight
- The Government is engaged in a number of other significant reviews relating to issues of advice, access to justice, funding, costs and markets for legal services. These include:
- A cross-cutting inter-departmental review of advice services;
- A review of competition for and regulation of legal services (the Clementi review)
- Review of costs in criminal legal aid and immigration/asylum advice
- A Better Regulation Taskforce Review of the role and regulatory review of litigation
- A consultation on regulation of Conditional Fees
- The courts are changing
The Government is engaged in a process of modernising the civil justice system, including unification of management of the Courts, the introduction of new systems of fine enforcement and regulation, and the creation of a single tribunals service.
Citizens are getting many new rights under the law
Recent and imminent legislation creating new rights for individuals or changing the nature of law in some areas means that the review of the CLS provides an opportunity to consider the need for strategic responses in terms of anticipating advice and representation needs that are currently not well provided for by the CLS, or any publicly funded legal or advice services. These legislative changes affecting individuals’ rights include, for example:
- Rights to claim tax credits creating a new area of welfare rights law and demand for advice and representation on entitlements and challenging decisions;
- The introduction of new fines penalty payment regimes;
- The introduction of mental incapacity legislation
- The development of equalities legislation with the implementation of the Equal Treatment Employment Directive by 2006, proposals for registration of civil partnerships, and the review of cohabitation rights.
- Reform of tenancy law – and the wider implications of this, including loss of succession rights.
- Criminal justice reforms including anti-social behaviour sanctions
In this context Citizens Advice is disappointed that the review’s terms of reference do not explicitly consider the wider strategic issues of:
- how effective the whole system of advice and representation services which the CLS represents is at delivering access to justice and human rights;
- whether the system is sufficiently flexible and future proof and able to respond to changes in legislation introducing new rights for individuals and changing systems of civil justice, including the development of ADR;
- how the various Government led reviews of the market for and regulation of legal services might impact on the future of the CLS.
Citizens Advice expects that the review of the CLS will nevertheless identify a number of essential improvements so as to:
- Bring a greater focus on the users of the system and the benefits to individuals which are achieved from investment in publicly funded legal services;
- Dramatically improve the workings and effectiveness of CLSPs if they are to remain a feature of the system;
- Improve the availability of advice in key areas where there is presently unmet need and emerging advice deserts;
- Improve the methods of assessing legal need;
- Simplify and bring proportionality to the contractual regime for the not for profit sector.
- Refocus contractual objectives and measurement of achievement on tackling social exclusion and outcomes for clients.
Citizens Advice would like to see future policy and practical implementation of the CLS have a much stronger linkage to and synergy with the ideas of promoting access to justice, tackling social and financial exclusion and improving community cohesion.
The future focus must be on the achievement of a service which meets and responds to changes in peoples’ needs, provides choice, is accessible, user-friendly and sensitive to issues as they present themselves in daily life. Citizens Advice believes that this is best achieved through:
- Clearly stated aims for the CLS to tackle social exclusion and an underlying ethos for the CLS based on the recognition that under the Human Rights Act equality of access to legal redress is an important state obligation.
- A client-centred focus on individuals’ real needs and circumstances, with appropriate redress for poor quality services
- As much diversity of provision and choice for individuals who need advice as possible by facilitating a mixed economy of provision, promoting information education and self-help, improving the accessibility of existing services and by widening the available methods of legal redress.
- Securing effective partnership between agencies, including between public and private agencies to deliver a seamless network of services – whether provided by those offering general help and advice or specialist casework.
- A holistic approach to solving problems. Supporting funding, training and auditing criteria and systems must be sufficiently flexible to encourage and enable front-line service providers to provide a holistic response as appropriate in clients best interests.
- A sustainable funding framework for advice services. More generally sustainability should be a key principle for the LSC in its approach to the management of funds and contracts in future. It is not sustainable, for example, that contract terms do not permit CABx to provide staff with salary increases without drawing on other funding sources or that funding cuts are made within financial years
- An emphasis on wider problem solving (through social policy work) with proper incentives for this work by advice providers and CLSPs.
- A culture which encourages and facilitates innovation.
The review of the CLS should be complemented by policy change to:-
- Provide a renewed commitment to access to justice in policy making relating to all aspects of publicly funded legal services;
- Review the principle of full costs recovery and the court fees system which act as barriers to justice for many people;
- Review the financial eligibility limits for publicly funded legal help which function to exclude all but the very poorest in our society from help with the costs of legal advice and representation;
- Place a moratorium on the extension of conditional fee arrangements to other areas of law until there has been a full review of whether the personal injury market, and the operation of no-win no fee in other areas such as housing disrepair, is benefiting claimants sufficiently.
- Regulate intermediaries in personal injury claims handling to put an end to exploitation and consumer detriment in this market;
- Extend public funding for tribunal representation in cases of hardship and user vulnerability
Solutions in these areas are matters for wider government policy and lie outside the relatively narrow confines of the terms of reference for the CLS review. However, solutions must also involve the LSC working in a much more joined up way with Government, centrally and locally.
3. The role of the CAB service in delivering access to justice
The Citizens Advice Service is a key agency involved in helping people gain access to justice in today’s society. This work involves helping people and communities to solve an enormous range of problems and challenges they face. We do this by giving high quality advice to individuals on their rights and responsibilities in relation to welfare benefits, rights at work, resolution of debt and housing problems, consumer disputes, immigration and asylum rights amongst many other issues. Access to independent advice constitutes one of the fundamental rights of citizenship.
CAB clients are predominantly people with low incomes or reliant on welfare benefits. We are often helping them to challenge decisions made by public sector service providers and decision makers. As such our service helps people to get the service and treatment they should have from the public sector and fulfil their legitimate rights and expectations. The service also has a wider role in combating social exclusion by tackling a multiplicity of interrelated problems as they present themselves in real life.
Our advice work covers not only individuals’ rights but also their responsibilities, so our work is part of the fabric of citizenship. The key is access to information and advice, and where necessary the support to help people to take effective action to enforce rights and fulfil obligations of citizenship. Unless citizens can access their rights, they are unlikely to recognise the reciprocal obligations that all citizens have to society.
We often represent people, in court, in tribunals and in negotiations with third parties. Where we are unable to advise or represent, we know who is able to help and can refer people on. Our problem solving expertise is also used, through policy work and campaigns, to invest the learning from experiences of people we advise to achieve lasting changes for those who have had similar problems.
Last year 5,717,565 million people used CAB services to help them find out about their rights and responsibilities. The number of problems CABx have dealt with included:
- Benefits - 1,628,719 problems
- Consumer and Debt Advice - 1,468,331 problems
- Employment Advice - 601,227 problems
- Housing Advice - 573,056 problems
- Immigration/Asylum - 75,848 problems
- Advice on dealing with the legal system - 460,158 problems
Development and implementation of public policy on access to justice and publicly funded legal services is a critical issue for the people who rely on CABx and for the CAB Service as a whole.
Citizens Advice Bureaux are independent charities, developed by and for the community. They are responsible for securing their own funds to continue to provide their service. They have no statutory right to funding from any source. CABx presently rely on the public sector for 89.2% of their funds to enable them to operate, and specifically the Community Legal Service funding now accounts for 19% of all CAB funds.
Decisions about those funds, how they are allocated and accounted has a significant impact on the availability of CAB services in communities and on access to justice for those people who do not know what their rights are or who need help in resolving problems and disputes and challenging decisions.
Citizens Advice believes the services CABx offer through contracts with the CLS provide value for money and result in net savings to the costs incurred by public authorities of dealing with cases at a later stage. These wider and long term benefits are not sufficiently captured or recognised by the whole system so as to make the public interest case for expenditure on the community legal service as a whole. Neither are the outcomes of our advice work as part of the CLS properly assessed by the Legal Services Commission – contractual monitoring focuses on inputs rather than outcomes.
4 Improving the effectiveness of Community Legal Service Partnerships (CLSPs)
CLS Partnerships are charged with a number of challenging tasks. First assessing local priority needs for legal advice and guidance and the production of a Strategic Plan. Second establishing referral systems. Third, taking action within local communities to increase access for justice for all, especially those groups or individuals experiencing social deprivation. Finally they are expected to establish linkages with Government programmes and local initiatives.
Whilst Citizens Advice endorse these objectives for CLSPs and, in general terms, the partnership idea we are not convinced that CLSPs are delivering fully or consistently on their objectives or providing an effective framework for joined up working and planning. In a recent survey of over 200 CABx only 16% of bureaux could agree that their CLSP had successfully made the case for advice at a local level and a similar minority of bureaux could agree that the achievements of the CLSP justified the resources the bureaux had put into participating. (Full results of this survey will be provided in the Citizens Advice submission to the Review at the end of October 2003).
This is hardly surprising as they have very few resources to support a challenging development brief.
If CLSPs are to continue to play a significant role in the CLS the following areas for development should have priority
- A Strategic focus – 69% of CABx agree that CLSPs should be expected to address the wider issues that impact on the need for legal advice. This is not currently being delivered by the CLSPs
- Problem solving – 74% of CABx believe that CLSPs should engage more with the public sector, and also the private sector to address failures in service delivery or practice that if unresolved can lead to increased demands for advice provision – for example administration of housing benefit.
- Resources and skills - Giving CLSPs the resources to undertake their role effectively will be essential if they are to be effective. Ensuring that they have appropriate leadership and that activity at a local or regional level is not dependent upon a ‘lead’ partner and that the CLSP can have some influence on local authority policies on funding advice services which complement and rely on the CLS are all important. In addition there need to be real incentives to participation by all key partners and action to ensure that CLSPs have a representative and diverse membership and that there is effective relationship-building with other community stakeholders eg LSPs
Improve working practices and engagement with users – Citizens Advice would like to see a stronger user focus and openness on the part of CLSPs, gathering regular feedback from communities rather than an inward and provider focus. All CLSPs should conform to minimum standards of practice in terms of their structure – eg membership of a steering group and involvement of user groups and they need underpinning to establish consistent approaches and models for CLSPs to use in judging and defining service.
Strategic development and capacity building should be part of the role of CLSPs including - Attracting new funders and co-ordinating funding strategies; Capacity-building for the future and consultation; development funding for under-resourced advice agencies to build up adequate advice infrastructure; development of written concordats and referral protocols and making these effective instruments of best practice
In view of the vital interaction between local authority funding for advice services and CLS funds, for CABx and other voluntary organisations, a stronger involvement of local authorities is likely to be required. It may be necessary to consider the introduction of an obligation for local authorities to participate in CLSPs as was suggested in the interim review of the CLS in 2001.
5. The impact, effectiveness and sustainability of the CLS
In this section we consider the impact and effectiveness of the CLS in terms of the availability of advice and representation in key areas of advice.
Is the CLS meeting adequately meeting needs?
As indicated above Citizens Advice has welcomed the general approach to the CLS as offering the potential for improvements compared to the former civil legal aid system in terms of predictability, stability of supply and availability of a reliable advice network, improved service quality.
The LSC has piloted a number of important developments in the delivery of legal services, innovations which were not necessarily attainable under the former system. These include the development of the Just Ask website and a range of consumer information publications; piloting of different methods of delivery such as telephone specialist legal advice services; development of new PIB funded projects for financial literacy, debt prevention projects, and domestic violence awareness; LSC civil legal aid costs assessments in small claims; grants for LPC courses for new legal aid practitioners, and the development of the Quality Mark
Nevertheless, the system is proving to be particularly vulnerable in some areas because of the funding and eligibility regime for legal help work, with losses of advice and representation provision both geographically and by subject area. There is strong evidence of withdrawal of providers, particularly solicitors, whose services are essential to retain if the CLS is indeed to offer a seamless and joined up network of providers working in partnership and complementing each other. For example:-
A CAB Client in Leatherhead needed a Legal Help solicitor for a Child Custody Case; the client was barred from using Legal Help Solicitors in two neighbouring towns due to conflict of interest as they had been contacted by the client’s ex partner. The nearest available solicitor was twelve miles away.
A CAB client in Romsey who has difficulties using public transport due to disability, needed legal advice about a family matter. There are no CLS solicitors in Romsey and client would have to travel to Southampton.
In Reading, a CAB survey of local solicitors found that over 2001-2002 while enquiries had increased by 49% in immigration and nationality matters, by 28.6% in employment cases and by 17.9% in separation and divorce, there has been a concurrent 23% reduction in the number of areas of legal aid work undertaken.
A CAB in the West Midlands reported that their client’s ex -wife’s partner was in breach of a court order concerning access to the client’s children. The client was very concerned about the threat of violence to the children by the ex-wife’s partner and needed help from a solicitor. The bureau were unable to find a CLS solicitor to help within a 15 mile radius.
In many major towns in Surrey there are no legal aid solicitors. One CAB advised a woman who had been attacked by the new girlfriend of her ex partner, causing a black eye. She was sure her ex partner had coerced his new girlfriend into attacking her. The Police and Social Services became involved. She wanted to seek an injunction and needed help from a solicitor. There was no legal help solicitor in the Surrey area able to take on the case.
The concern within the Citizens Advice service at present is that a number of what might be called ‘advice deserts’ are building up. These are the key access issues where the CLS in its present form either does not meet needs effectively or is showing signs of failing to meet legitimate needs for advice and representation. Citizens Advice recognises that some of these issues concern policy for Government.
Examples of these ‘advice deserts’ or access problems follow.
- Access to legal help on housing, family and community care issues.
- In many parts of the country, especially rural communities, solicitors are no longer undertaking legally aided work in these fields. Whilst there is much that CABx and other agencies can do for clients, there are some problems which can only be resolved by professional legal expertise such as:
- drafting and applying for injunctions,
- administering divorce proceeding
- defending possession and eviction action
On housing advice Citizens Advice research (Evidence Report: Possession Action) shows there is both a need for and value to preventative interventions to avoid repossessions assist with receipts of council rents, smooth administration of housing benefit and avoid the additional public and social costs of homelessness and fulfilment of local authorities duties to re-house homeless persons.
Community care law attracts virtually no public funding at all, despite its central importance to tackling social exclusion and human rights abuses
Asylum/immigration
The present system does not seem to be particularly effective at filling hard to fill gaps, for example where there are shortages of competent advisers in specialist areas of law, for example immigration and asylum. There is a need for a better balance between state supported/funded services and role of private practice in protecting rights. This includes addressing issues with NASS and overlap between welfare and legal problems, the probity, quality and standard of immigration practice/advice and the Government’s proposed reforms for regulation of CLS immigration contracts and hours of advice given.
Access to advice on debt and tackling financial exclusion:
Although 193 CABx hold contracts for debt advice there is a supply demand problem with debt and financial advice for low-income households generally. Our report In too Deep found that large numbers of those consumers in financial difficulties are not getting independent advice early enough and sometimes struggle on with their debt problems for up to a year before getting independent help. Research by the FSA and DTI for the DTI’s Overindebtedness Task Force has found millions of households are in financial difficulties but only a small proportion obtain advice. A Cabinet Office PIU report published in March 2002 recommended that there should be a crosscutting governmental review of debt advice, debt collection and recovery. We would like to see an examination, whether as part of the CLS review or a wider review by Government of sustainable means of funding money advice services, possibly involving more significant contributions from the private sector.
Access to Tribunals
Tribunals are often described as a cheaper more accessible and user-friendly forum of adjudication. However there is no public funding for tribunal representation and users often find themselves having to deal with complex procedures. Across all the advice areas that come within the scope of CLS, we would like to see CLS funding made available for representation at tribunals, though we recognise the needs for a merits test in this context.
ADR
As a means of getting best value for money, we would like to see a greater emphasis on mediation, negotiation and settlements and other ADR procedures where these are effective. We would like to see greater incentives for legal aid practitioners to pursue these avenues; these incentives could be structured into the contracts.
Access to small claims litigation
Small claims litigation is often a zero-sum game. CABx report clients on low incomes who find the costs of taking a case prohibitive due to:
- Excessive court fees and the failure of remission procedures,
- High insurance premiums for conditional fee agreements in personal injury cases
- The low financial eligibility limits for legal help and representation
Accessibility of CLS advice/representation for people with specific needs regarding for example DDA issues, translation; support and advocacy for people with mental health problems and learning difficulties.
Access to legal help in rural areas
Critical problems in gaining access to legal services in rural areas with dispersed and small populations, which means that pockets of poverty are difficult to identify when planning services and poor and expensive public transport provides a significant barrier;
The system for identifying legal need
In a planned system, it is recognised that the LSC has to be able to enforce targets indicated by analysis of need. However, needs change, evidence is never precise, and no planning system in this field can give anything other than a broad indication. Need analysis is at best an attempt to develop an objective process about potential demand for services, which informs choices about the funding of those services. Needs analysis can however identify where a population group has low access to services, or where there is a particularly inadequate supply of advice on particular subjects.
There is a need for more transparency and consistency of LSC decision-making, and a much clearer and more widely understood demonstration of how contract planning is underpinned by thorough assessment of local needs
Needs analysis therefore must rest on very clear definitions of justiciable problems, indices of access, local evidence and a framework for understanding relationships of poverty, social exclusion, proximity to services and availability of information and informal systems of support within communities. Policy-making must understand both the limits and possibilities of need analysis. Work should be undertaken on developing needs models that translate into better decision making about levels of service and spending requirements than at present.
There is a need for more user focus at the heart of the LSC. The LSC needs a far greater understanding of the needs of the client group served by the not for profit sector.
If the Government is serious in its expectations that the CLS will help to tackle social exclusion the contractual regime, and compliance monitoring system must be refocused to take into account the outcomes achieved by advice providers and also the length of time it can take to advise and support people who are facing social and financial exclusion.
The impact of the CLS on advice service providers
Although a significant proportion of CAB funds are now derived from the CLS, some CABx have experienced displacement effects from the CLS such that some local authority core funding has been withdrawn on the basis that central government is now funding that area of advice.
There are cases where local authority funding to agencies has been reduced because the local authority believes it is duplicating LSC funding. In fact, LSC funding covers only the very poorest people in the community. The majority of clients attending CABx and other community advice centres will not be eligible for help from the CLS. This impact points to the need for a greater recognition by the LSC of the perception of other funders in the not for profit sector and for more pro-active work by the LSC and the Government to ensure better understanding by local authorities of the role of LSC funding and the restrictions on its use and the necessity for stable funding for advice services for non-eligible clients if the CLS is to be effective.
There is a standard term in the contacts that allows the LSC to reduce their funding to a CAB by the same amount as any reduction in their core funding unless that core funding is replaced to their satisfaction within a specified period. This is a worry.
To redress this decline CLS partners should look to LSC and government to work to secure more active engagement and better understanding by local government of the role of CLS funding (in particular the restrictions on its use).
Provisions for claw-back of CLS funds within financial years for ‘underperformance’ are unfair, seem to be applied inconsistently and are ultimately damaging to the capacity of not for profit advice providers and also damage their confidence in remaining within the system.
Turning to specific provisions of the contracting regime which could be improved Citizens Advice regularly receives feedback from bureaux who find the overall length and complexity of the LSC’s NfP contract excessive and out of proportion to the volume of legally aided work undertaken in individual CABx relative to other work and other funds. The same contractual requirements apply irrespective of the volume of funds and work undertaken. At the same time there are reqular changes to and consultations about contracting requirements. The focus of compliance monitoring is on inputs rather than outcomes which is not only demotivating to CABx but a missed opportunity to assess the overall benefits of investment in publicly funded legal services.
Management Information
The burden of management information requirements placed on individual providers seems disproportionate and could be considerably cut, releasing more resources for frontline services. Currently bureaux are required to devote considerable time and resources to LSC contract management; this process also seems to have created an unnecessarily cumbersome machinery for the LSC. In order for the contracting regime to be sustainable from a CAB perspective Citizens Advice sees the need for the LSC to develop a programme of contract simplification underpinned by a policy of proportionality in contracting approach and monitoring. A re-orientation of contract objectives and compliance measures is needed to focus on outcomes not inputs.
The LSC practice of specifying that suppliers with a contract in more than one category have to deliver a specified number of hours in each subject, rather than a global total, can make it difficult for CABx to reach contracted targets. CABx often find it difficult to meet the hours because of local demand circumstances beyond their control, especially in areas of widely scattered need such as rural areas. In conjunction with a simplification project the LSC should actively consider how to create a more flexible and supple system to ensure that local advice service providers are not penalised by substantial differences in anticipated demand for advice on particular topics and can respond to local differences in demand where their overall funds allow this.
The April 2003 NfP Contract
The new civil contract for the NfP sector is proving extremely unpopular with bureaux, 90 individual CABs submitted consultation responses opposing the changes to the contracts.
Key issues for bureaux include:-
- The 'separate matters' reporting system breaks down the reporting requirements of typical CAB cases into different streams, as if each matter is handled separately. This undermines and fails to recognise the holistic approach of generalist advice, and the interconnected nature of problems faced by people experiencing poverty and social exclusion.
- The compliance regime expects an approach to and level of detail in case recording which does not take into account the method of working best suited for CAB clients and CABx.
- LSC only pays for ‘direct casework time'. Form filling is excluded as it if it is uninmportant work; so time is disallowed for example on essential aspects of welfare benefits advice involving assisting clients to claim their rights. Social policy work also excluded.
- Caseworkers feel uncomfortable applying the sufficient benefit test which may mean that clients on extremely low incomes cannot be helped because the value of their claim is not sufficiently high. This fails to take into account the relative significance of small sums for people on the lowest incomes.
We also suggest that there is a case for contracts to run for a longer period, perhaps up to five years, to avoid upheavals by service providers and improve sustainability and predictability of the system.
Finally there is a need for greater flexibility in the funding formula to respond to areas of priority need. When the CLS was established we highlighted the problem that the move to a fixed budget would inevitably raise concerns about funding running out. These concerns have now come to pass.
Citizens Advice
September 2003
Appendix: CLS Review - Terms of Reference
The terms of reference of the review will consider three focus areas:
THE COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICE PARTNERSHIPS (CLSPs)
The review will assess:
- The appropriateness of the number and structure of CLSPs and their ability to engage in respect of wider agendas
- The variations in effectiveness across CLSPs in taking forward the aims of the CLS and
- The extent to which CLSPs have been successful in co-ordinating the delivery of accessible and targeted legal advice services on a local level.
THE IMPACT OF THE CLS ON THE DELIVERY OF LEGAL ADVICE SERVICES
The review will:
- Consider the impact of the CLS on the local landscape of advice provision (particularly in respect of meeting the needs of specific disadvantaged groups and areas) and whether current funding priorities are suitable.
- Assess the extent to which the CLS Quality Mark has driven up the standards of legal advice and information delivery.
The work of the review will be also undertaken with reference to provision that addresses issues in respect of the following categories of social welfare law
- Housing/Homelessness
- Consumer Affairs
- Money/Debt
- Employment
- Welfare Benefits
- Community Care
- Discrimination
- Immigration
- Neighbours
- Medical Negligence
- Personal Injury (caused by deliberate injury or abuse)
- Children and Young Persons
- Domestic Violence
- Divorce/Relationships
- Police Treatment
- Public Order (Anti Social Behaviour Orders etc)
- Education (exclusion etc)
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION
The review will examine management information in order to ascertain whether:
- Current data collected accurately measures performance and whether this data is capable of effecting improvements in service delivery
- Key parties make full and suitable use of information produced at present (i.e. Strategic Plans) and their structures enable them to do so.
- Additional systems and processes should be set in place to facilitate the future evaluation of the CLS (the establishment of an independent inspectorate, future independent reviews etc)
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