New style legal advice centre opens in Portsmouth
A pioneering new Community Legal Advice Centre has opened in Portsmouth to help with the increasing amount of debt in the city and the estimated 21,000 people each year in Portsmouth which require legal advice.
The new Centre, located on London Road (1-3a), on the corner of Kingston Crescent will be run by run by the Portsmouth charity, Southern Focus Trust and the Portsmouth Citizens Advice Bureau, providing families and individuals with a one stop shop for advice on a range of legal issues such as divorce, employment, debt, housing and welfare benefits. A number of outreach locations will also become available in Buckland, Portsea, Somerstown and Paulsgrove.
Nicki Youern, Chief Executive of Southern Focus Trust, said: We want everyone in Portsmouth to know that the Centre is there for them: for free general help and advice no matter what their problem. If someone needs further legal advice in employment, housing, benefits, debt, relationship breakdown they need look no further. We are here to help and to make a real impact on issues such as debt, loss of housing and welfare benefit take up. However difficult the problem may seem we can people find a way forward.”
The Centre will help with matters on:
- Debt or money advice and income maximisation
- Welfare benefits and benefits take up
- Housing
- Community Care
- Employment
- Family and matrimonial issues
There are plans to launch Community Legal Advice Centres across the whole country, and Portsmouth is at the start of this exciting initiative. These centres will be key to delivering a civil legal aid system, which is focused on people in greatest need, better coordinated and able to tackle the causes of legal problems. This is at the heart of the Legal Services Commission’s strategy for legal advice to people who need it. Geoff Mountjoy, Regional Director for the Legal Services Commission in the South, said: “This new Centre will provide a one-stop shop for people seeking vital advice on a number of problems. We understand that getting the right advice at the right time can mean that people do not lose their home, or have their children taken into care.”
“Portsmouth’s new Community Legal Advice Centre will really make a difference for people who would normally have to seek advice from a number of different places. They can now access help on a range of legal problems, all under one roof. The centre is the first of its kind in the south and I hope it will provide a blueprint for how legal aid can be provided in the future, by focusing on the practical needs of the public.”
Portsmouth was chosen because it has high levels of deprivation, a concentration of benefits claimants and no current joined-up integrated legal advice service. The city also has the highest levels of deprivation in the south and 13.6% of its 188,000 population have income deprivation.
Portsmouth City Council and the Legal Services Commission have used their current funding to enable SFT, which has provided legal advice in the city for over 20 years, to open this new service with the help of Portsmouth CAB, which has provided advice services in the city since 1939. Simon Lawson, Chief Executive of Portsmouth CAB, said: “The centre will provide a more coordinated approach offering a seamless service from gateway and assessment through to specialist advice.”
Margaret Geary, Strategic Director Portsmouth City Council, said: “Portsmouth City Council is very pleased that the Citizens Advice Bureau and Southern Focus Trust have teamed up to launch a new "joined up" legal advice service. Portsmouth residents face spiralling debts alongside a range of other problems, this new service will be better placed than ever before to help local people gain control over their finances and deal with other legal difficulties.”
