Making advice 'sexy'?

Citizens Advice held its social policy law conference this month in London. The theme of the conference was 'Tackling poverty - taking action now', but one of the undercurrents in the conference was the controversy over Community Legal Advice Centres (CLACs)- the Legal Services Commission's tenders designed to tackle clusters of problems or to undermine the not-for-profit (NFP) sector depending on your point of view.

Guest speaker Lisa Harker, co-director of the Institute of Public Policy Research, asserted that '[Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABx)] were one stop shops before the government started thinking about one stop shops.' Perhaps she was trying to stir up some controversy as the founder and chairperson of A4e, Emma Harrison, was also a speaker.

A4e was established in 1986 by Harrison in Sheffield to provide employment training to the unemployed. The now internationally successful company recently won the tender to run the Hull CLAC at the expense of Hull CAB. Harrison deftly avoided any discussion of CLACs by saying that she did not want to be drawn into a discussion on running advice services as 'much smarter people than I work on that'. Her main message seemed to be that A4e wanted to make it 'a cool thing to seek advice, glamorous, even sexy'. She said: 'Too often people see advice as a last resort rather than a first port of call.'

In a bout of what may be described as CLAC shadow boxing, Teresa Perchard, director of public policy at Citizens Advice, put questions to Harrison on 'persuading local councils to fund advice'. Harrison parried these by criticising the sector: 'I saw an advice centre the other day at which the first four people waiting outside were let in and the rest were sent away. Wrong, wrong, wrong.' Harrison also castigated centres for 'not even having nice chairs for people to sit on', adding that, 'the new advice centre in Hull will be the new way for advice to be offered'.

While delegates seemed annoyed by Harrison's comments, debate rightly swung back to the issue of poverty and the difficulties CABx clients are facing. Harrison's main experience is in employment training and so maybe the NFP advice world is a bit of a culture shock to her, but as for A4e making advice 'glamorous' or even 'sexy', it is hardly something you could accuse employment training of being. Harrison's story of only four people being let into an advice centre does have a ring of familiarity - such rationing of advice services is usually forced on providers through lack of resources rather than any lack of commitment to serving clients though. What would A4e do if the money is insufficient to provide a decent service or any new chairs for that matter, when the Hull CLAC is up for tender again?

Too often NFP advice services have proved their commitment to their clients by struggling on in such circumstances, not very good from a business point of view, but then people tend to work in advice services because they are motivated by more than just making a profit.

No apologies

Crispin Passmore head of the Community Legal Service at the LSC argues that joint tenders with local authorities are the future for social welfare law services.

In the last month new Community Legal Advice services [the new name for Community Legal Advice Centres or CLACs] opened in Leicester, Derby and Portsmouth. In each of these we have jointly commissioned with the local authority a comprehensive legal and advice service covering general help and advice, specialist advice and legal representation across five social welfare law categories and family. In each of them the local community will get more help and more joined up help. They will better focus services on local priorities and reach out to people who do not access the advice they should.

There is no doubt that this is a period of significant change for providers involved in delivering general advice and legal aid for social welfare law. Having delivered the best service they can for many years, their funders are now saying that they want a different service. I do not apologise for that. In recent years we have learnt more about how current legal and advice services too often fail to meet the needs of the communities that need them – fragmented services presenting an un-navigable advice maze to clients faced with domestic violence, illegal eviction and poverty. It would be a failure of public service delivery to not respond to those criticisms.

If we track back to 2004 the LSC was criticised for poor leadership to the Community Legal Service, for falling numbers of people being helped and for gaps in services – so called ‘advice deserts’. A clear direction has been identified after careful consideration of internationally renowned academic research. It was consulted upon in 2005 and has been reconsidered by Lord Carter. Our focus now needs to be on making change happen. We are beginning to see real evidence of positive change in terms of more people helped, better access and joined up services.

Yet, understandably, there is real discomfort that a CAB faces the loss of its contract to deliver debt and benefits advice in Hull as they have not been successful in the tender for a new Community Legal Advice service to open there. However, under previous arrangements clients needing representation under a legal aid certificate had to be referred elsewhere, as did those whose debt and benefits problems were combined with relationship breakdown, homelessness or discrimination at work.

It is disappointing that so many commentators wish to defend services that clients cannot access or that cannot provide the joined up service that clients need. Across Hull four firms or agencies have been delivering social welfare law advice. None have community care contracts, one does only housing and one does only employment. The people of Hull will now get a much improved service.

So what about the future? I do not want the tender process for future Community Legal Advice services to be about finding the one good provider – it is not about weeding out poor quality. I want three, four, five or more top quality bids for each Community Legal Advice service. I doubt they will ever be just each of the current local providers looking to expand to cover the full range of services. More likely is that bids will come from mergers or partnerships of local agencies, regional suppliers such as A4E/Howells, national providers such as Shelter or Citizens Advice and other local providers interested in providing social welfare law services only if they are on an economically viable scale. We are already seeing this pattern emerge with better and better bids in each tender exercise and interesting new relationships forming amongst providers. Good bids will inevitably not succeed where competition is strong – I hope that providers continue to respond to not winning one tender by innovating to deliver better services in their next bid. We know that recent bidders have already been doing this and those that resist change risk being left behind.

In the future competition will come from these regional and national and nearby local providers – all having expertise in delivering joined up services, understanding local needs and, importantly, all committed to delivering the services that Government and Local Government want to procure for their citizens.

Crispin Passmore, Community Legal Service

Civil Legal Aid Contract Deal

Legal aid lawyers and their paymasters announced a cessation in hostilities. A joint statement was published by the Law Society, the Legal Services Commission (LSC) and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) on 2nd April announcing an agreement following ‘a series of open, constructive and pragmatic discussions’. Chancery Lane claims that its negotiations have secured the following ‘concessions’ to the reform programme:

• delaying the introduction of community legal advice centres (CLACs) and community legal advice networks (CLANs) until April 2010. There are 15 in the pipeline with four yet to be announced;
• a 2% increase on non-family fixed fees;
• an increase on childcare pre-proceeding fixed fees from £347 to £405;
• a 5% increase in fees for mental health and immigration tribunal work;
• delaying the introduction of family litigators' graduated fees;
• an amnesty on historic unrecouped payments on account over six years and where the amount outstanding is less than £20,000;
• delaying the introduction of best value tendering in criminal legal aid by six months to a date ‘not before’ July 2009;
• and no price competitive tendering for civil law family work before 2013.

‘It is good news that the impasse between the profession and government appears to have been surmounted but these ‘concessions’ are a mixed bag. We fear that the slight fee increases don’t go far enough to arrest the damage already done to mental health or child care providers,’ says Steve Hynes, director of the Legal Action Group. ‘We’re glad to see the government taking a pause for thought over the introduction of CLACs and CLANs although we question whether they are ‘concessions’ at all or a response to a lack of interest on the part of local authorities.’

The joint statement said that the agreement was ‘designed to provide a significant period of certainty and stability’ for providers to ‘enable them to adapt to the changes to the legal aid system that have already been introduced and to consider and plan for the future’.

There was a note of contrition on the part of the LSC and the MOJ over their stance on the legal challenges to the unified contract and its conflict with public procurement regulations. ‘They regret that the implications of those regulations were not recognised earlier and acknowledge that the Law Society was justified in commencing those proceedings,’ the statement said.

Chancery Lane will discontinue its judicial review proceedings launched against the LSC in February on the strength of the deal which it was claimed would ‘provide tangible benefits for legal aid practitioners’ and which would ‘establish procedures designed to ensure a closer and more constructive relationship between parties in the future’.

Bill Montague, managing partner of Dexter Montague & Partners, who jointly brought claims against the LSC with the Law Society last year, said that settlement marked ‘a watershed in the relationship between legal aid practitioners and the LSC’. Des Hudson, chief executive of the Law Society, said that the ‘more consultative approach embraced by the LSC’ would ‘hopefully allow us to work with them to address some of the most pressing issues’. ‘However, we still have serious concerns about the future of legal aid,' he added.


Read Jon Robbins' article This is Jacqui: she's here to save you from eviction in The Observer Sunday 13 April 2008.