The delayed timetable for Manchester’s new Community Legal Advice Service (CLAS) will make it impossible for some clients to obtain advice on social welfare problems, the Law Society has warned.
The Legal Services Commission told the Gazette it will announce the bidders who have won contracts to run the six new community advice centres next week, nearly two months later than originally planned.
The initiative, commissioned in partnership with Manchester City Council, is designed to combine civil legal aid and social welfare advice under one roof at centres across the city.
Law Society legal aid manager Richard Miller said: ‘The proposal to announce the outcomes in late July already represented significant slippage on a timetable that we had condemned as too tight to start with.
‘This further three-week delay means that there is no reasonable prospect of the successful bidders being able to establish the required services by the time the contracts are due to go live.’
He added: ‘Since the unsuccessful bidders will have no right to take on new clients after 13 October, it seems inevitable that there will be a perhaps prolonged period when it is impossible for some clients to get access to the advice and representation they need.’
An LSC spokesman said the delay was due to the nature of the jointly commissioned project, which meant it had taken longer to reach agreement on some issues, but said the CLAS was expected to open on schedule in mid-October.
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