Community legal advice services consultation

Overview

Community legal advice services – your views needed

Our current contracts to provide free social welfare advice to council residents are due to come to an end in March 2020. We will be putting new contracts in place because we want to ensure that residents continue to have access to free and independent advice, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our current contracts provide

1. Generalist advice which covers:

• Benefits and tax credits
• Debt and money advice
• Consumer goods and services
• Housing and homelessness - including advice to Southwark Leaseholders
• Utilities and communications
• Employment rights
• Immigration and asylum
• Family and relationship rights
   
• Advice in community languages 

    2. Specialist legal advice which covers:

• Casework in more than one area of law – e.g. housing & welfare benefits
• Welfare benefits – helping with challenges to welfare benefit decisions including representation at Tribunals and Upper Tribunals
• Housing – including disrepair, rent arrears, possession proceedings, evictions and homelessness
• Employment – including rights at work, discrimination, dismissal and redundancy
• Immigration and asylum – including asylum claims and appeals, family reunion and citizenship
• Other – areas of law not covered in other categories.
   

Why your views matter

We would like you to complete our survey because before we make any decisions about the services we commission from April 2020, because we want to be sure that:

• The services provided are the right ones  - they cover the areas of law that residents need.
• We understand the needs of residents correctly – particularly as these needs change over time.
• Residents from disadvantaged backgrounds are able to access the services.