The idea behind the Community Legal Service (CLS) was for people to find help easily and feel confident in the quality of service they get from legal service and advice providers. The CLS aims to ensure that people can get help and information about their legal rights and understand how to enforce them in the right place and at the right time.
To make it easier for the public to get advice and legal help, the CLS brings together organisations offering advice and legal services into local networks. These networks include solicitors, Citizens' Advice Bureau, Law Centres, local authority services (including libraries), community centres, and a host of other organisations. The networks are organised and supported by Community Legal Service Partnerships, which are made up of representatives of the Legal Services Commission, local authorities, funders and providers of advice.
The job of Partnerships is to assess the need for legal and advice services in their area. They must also work together to ensure that the right kinds of services are available to meet priority needs.
Details of the CLS Partnerships are available on the Community Legal Service link to external website website.
Consumer advice agencies are working together as a group to develop a network plan to ensure that good quality consumer advice is accessible by the whole community. The Consumer Support Networks (CSNs) initiative, encourages consumer advice providers to join-up their services and provide consumers, wherever they live, with reliable, timely and quality assured advice.
Consumer advice needs to reflect today's complex and fast-changing marketplace. It must take account of developments such as the growth of internet shopping and the often complicated ways that goods and services are sold. We would expect advice available to cover:
Consumer Support Networks and the Community Legal Service are complementary initiatives.
For more general information see the Consumer Support Networks link to external website website.
An important principle of the Community Legal Service is that of simple referral to the right part of the network. If the first organisation you contact cannot help, they should be able to refer to another organisation that can. Community Legal Service Partnerships will ensure that advice providers in their area take part in a referral network and strongly encourage providers to apply for the Quality Mark.
One of the ways to improve access to, and delivery of legal and advice services in the community is by setting up and running referral networks. Effective referral is also one of the requirements of the CLS Quality Mark. We want people to recognise a certain standard of legal information and help.
When you see an organisation that displays the CLS logo, you know that organisation meets certain quality standards. If a Community Legal Service provider is unable to deal with all aspects of your problem, it can refer clients to another Quality Marked organisation.
For more information on the Community Legal Service Quality Mark see the Legal Services Commission link to external website website.
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