The Legal Services Commission has signalled its intention to end all community legal advice centre and network (CLAC/N) contracts next year. It has written to all contract holders and partner local authorities to inform them of the proposal to end the contracts on 31 March 2013.

The LSC’s action is proposed in light of the government’s legal aid reforms, which remove most social welfare and family law from the scope of legal aid.

Subject to the passing of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill, the changes will be introduced in April 2013. The LSC says this will remove 75% of CLAC/N work from scope and mean the contracts are ‘no longer likely to be financially viable’.

Instead the LSC will commission face-to-face services and the proposed telephone gateway in CLAC/N procurement areas in the normal way. Current CLAC/N providers will be able to bid for such contracts. CLACs and CLANs were designed to offer a one-stop shop for clients with social welfare and family legal problems, providing integrated services from advice to representation at court. The first opened in Gateshead in 2007. Following the closure of the Portsmouth CLAC in April 2011, there are now nine such services - Manchester, Gateshead, Leicester, Derby, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, West Sussex, Wakefield, and Barking and Dagenham.

Richard Miller, the Law Society’s head of legal aid, said that while the Society has long had concerns about the concept of CLACs, termination of the CLAC contracts will ‘wipe out the only remaining suppliers of general advice in these areas’.

He added: ‘The government needs to answer urgently the question what they are going to do to ensure the availability of advice after March 2013.’

A LSC spokesperson said: 'We are engaging now with CLACs, CLANs and local authorities on our proposals to be open and transparent about our future intentions for Social Welfare and family law post-April 2013. We want to give them as much notice as possible prior to starting the planned changes, to enable them to prepare for the future.'