The CAB, had its cake, now feeling a bit sick

How many times in the last week have you read a document that says something along the lines of 'If you don't understand what x, y or z means you should seek advice from a solicitor, the CAB or Local Law centre'?

In 10 years time I wonder whether the CAB or Local Law Centres will be mentioned so much.

Is the fate of Hull CAB a sign of things to come for the CABx all across the land?

Being in a smaller more rural County our CABx is under threat from the probably inevitable introduction of a CLAN. The difficulties our bureau is having in setting up a local consortium that would be in a position to bid for any CLAN contracts make me wonder how many CABx will survive should the LSC decide to push through their ideas on CLAN's and CLAC's regardless of the opposition.

The trouble with CABx is that that they are all run as independent (independent from each other, not truly independent in terms of advice provision in my opinion) franchises and all have their own Trustee boards. This makes any sort of Consortium extremely hard to run.

If a Consortium is to be successful then I believe that there needs to be a board of trustees or similar that has power over all of its members. If one of the members is failing then someone needs to have the power to take action for the sake of the other members who may all be at risk due to that 1 members failings.

Unsurprisingly this is an extremely difficult task as perhaps understandably the Local Trustee board members don't want to give up their power and Independence. However if said Trustee's don't wake up to the fact that the nature of advice provision is changing and changing quickly then it may be to late.

For many years the CAB has enjoyed a form of monopoly over other advice providers due to the fact it had pretty much guaranteed funding from Local Authorities. In my experience from ten odd years at various CABx this had meant that many CABx have got fat and lazy, to used to their own monopoly. That guaranteed funding is perhaps the CABx Achilles heel. Without it most CABx included my own can't survive.

Therefore do CABx have any choice but to do what the LSC want, ie CLAN's and CLAC's, and get into a position to bid for them as if they do not they may well lose all the Local Authority funding they have enjoyed for so long?

I've been pondering the question and I'm not sure. Perhaps the LSC might back down should the unpopularity that is involved in the closure of Local CABx become to much for politicians and local counsellors to bare.

However If CABx don't want to take this dangerous risk then perhaps the real challenge is whether CABx can rise to the challenge of a new age of advice provision and actually show that they really do do it better than companies such as A4E and Crapita (Blame Private Eye).

Fortunately the CAB seem to be waking up to this new challenge and is pumping money into helping CABx get into a better position to bid for such CLAC, CLAN contracts. Whether the old age way of running CABx can change in order to make such bids successful remains to be seen.

Interesting times