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May 2008 

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What's happening to Hull CAB?!

Iran Attack?? Cenotaph, Hull 5.00pm

• Hull's Citizens Advice Bureau is NOT going to close...
• But CAB and HIHAC are both about to be taken over...
• CAB's brand name will be kept...
• HCC is likely to agree a new CLAC to be run by A4E and a solicitors' firm/trainee solicitor?
• CAB and HIHAC, having little choice, are likely to be part of it.
• LSC and HCC funding will be £3.5 million (over 3 years?)

There is a meeting on it next Weds. 23rd April at 9.30am in the Methodist Church on Holderness Road (opp. Woodford Centre). 

Hull City Council, since recent protests, is seeking advice from the Hull area boards and will make its decision made mid-May.

What's happening is that the Legal Services Commission (LSC), the government body in charge of legal aid, wants to overhaul advice-giving across the UK.  

Its wants one-stop shops where a wide variety of advice and legal services can be given. But some bids are being won by private firms together with solicitors.  Independent providers such as CAB and HIHAC and Law Centres will be replaced or subsumed into the new organisations, CLACs.

In Hull, advice services, for the first time and because of the LSC initiative, have been subject to a tender process to provide advice across the city but, despite its huge experience, CAB lost. 

The winner is international company A4E, Action for Employment. They are called the "preferred bidder". 

Interestingly, Leicester has just opened a CLAC - but has just closed its "excellent" Leicester Law Centre (see end). An article here by lawyer Steven Hynes on CLACs explains how Leicester Law Centre didn't get the tender because they were "honest". Instead A4E and Howell's Solicitors won in Leicester. Last December  Howell's were looking for extra (trainee) lawyers for this.

The tendering process has been going on for some time and includes this interesting analysis on needs in Hull. 

The 60 paid CAB workers will have their jobs transferred to the new Hull CLAC (Community Legal Aid Centre). There is no mention of the 50-strong volunteer network.

The LSC are doing things like this across the country.  

We don't know:

• how many other CABs or city law centres are under threat
• how CABs work will be affected by the takeover
• if the CLAC will be anywhere as near as effective as the CAB and HIHAC (also being taken over)

The following briefing does not mention the preferred bidder is A4E nor that their first claim to fame is Clinton's old Welfare to Work programme. This started in America to effectively force poor, unemployed people into minimum wage jobs at significant distances from their homes, even mums with children (as in Fahrenheit 9/11 film). Such a good idea the DWP have adopted it here.

Hull CLAC (Community Legal Aid Centre) briefing here:

• Legal Services Commission wants to create "one stop shops" 
• The CLACs are jointly funded by the LSC and the local authority, [ie all public money.]
• CAB bid refused as could not provide whole range of services.
• CAB bid was thought unprofessional as the number of cases it handled could not be
• more...

HISTORY

2006 - LSC has bright idea. First two tenders for CLACs begin in Gateshead and Leicester.

Dec 06 - Leicester organisations fail in bid for CLAC.

2007 - £2.7 million for 3 years, joint funded by LSC and Leicester CC. Tender goes to A4E and Howell's solicitors.

Apr 08 - Leicester Law Centre closed: funding withdrawn and transferred to Leicester Community Legal Advice Centre, despite being pronounced an "excellent" centre. 

Leicester CLAC is run by preferred bidders: A4E and Howells Solicitors.