Proposed changes will benefit the community

Much of this will have given readers the wrong impression about the future of these services in the area.

Community Legal Advice services aim to combine our funding and knowledge with that of the local authorities to jointly buy services that better meet the needs of local people.

This will range from basic advice to specialist representation. They will not be exclusively for those people eligible for legal aid and will continue to provide general advice services for the whole community.

People do not face '˜legal problems' but problems to which the law may offer a solution. For too long, publicly-funded legal advice has been governed by the structure of the law and not by the problems people face.

Community legal advice services will be built around the needs of local people to provide access to high-quality face-to-face legal and advice services.

Research has shown when people experience one problem, it frequently triggers further problems.

One of the cornerstones of community legal advice services is people can get advice on a range of the most common, and often linked, problems such as debt, housing, employment and family law.

When jointly commissioning services with the local authorities this will be based on what is best for the local community. Our clients, who are often experiencing a crisis, deserve good-quality integrated services so we will give contracts to those who show they can best deliver that for our clients.

Geoff Mountjoy, regional director, South Legal Services Commission

I am a former Citizens Advice Bureau volunteer, awarded a MBE for work with benefit claimants, who is profoundly worried by a threat to the advice services of West Sussex, including our own very busy bureau in Bognor Regis.

The Legal Services Commission, which administers legal aid, is encouraging West Sussex local authorities to pool their present funding for CABs to form a joint pot, to which the Commission will add money they have available, so bids can be invited to provide what are called Community Advice Centres.

But this Commission money is only offered for three years; what happens after that?

The proposed new service is said to provide '˜one stop' to which people with multiple problems, for instance benefit, debt, housing, can go.

But this is precisely the way a CAB already operates. Moreover the new service would only deal with certain problems, no help for instance with consumer complaints.

Finally the new service would deal only with those who qualify under the very strict rules for legal aid, turning away all others including some of the most vulnerable, like elderly owner-occupiers.

West Sussex Citizens Advice Bureaux wish to retain a locally-led and locally-delivered advice service to local people and will be putting in a bid.

If they win, the present service will continue, enhanced and extended.

But if some profit-making body, without commitment to the wider community, wins, the heart will be torn from the service and it will wither and die.

And those who go to the Bognor CAB in such numbers to seek its help will have nowhere to go.

May Berry, Craigweil Lane, Aldwick