TIME LIMITS: Citizens Advice Bureaux and Legal Action Group join attack on government plan

The Children's Legal Centre (CLC) has won a grant from the Home Office to develop a service for voluntary sector organisations that work with refugee and asylum-seeking children in the east of England.

The CLC, based at the University of Essex, has been granted 254,000 to develop a Web site and training.

The award was made after the CLC produced research showing nearly half of refugee and asylum-seeking children throughout the eastern region have no access to education and other statutory services.

Features of the site will include sample letters and links to legal services.

In some cases relating to education, healthcare and housing, referrals to lawyers can be made, or the CLC will take on the case itself.

It may also have links to participating lawyers who would offer ongoing legal advice via e-mail.

CLC deputy director Yvonne Spencer said: 'It's about empowering the voluntary and statutory sector, and helping them to be more proactive.'

If the site is successful, it may be rolled out to offer a national service, she added.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux and Legal Action Group have added their voices to the opposition to government plans to restrict asylum seekers' initial legal advice to five hours.

The association said the Department for Constitutional Affairs proposal would adversely affect the outcome of cases, thus breaching the European Convention on Human Rights.

Director David Harker said that while the rising cost of the work is a serious matter, unnecessary spending could be reduced by tackling the 'endemic problems of poor-quality Home Office decision making, inefficiency and delays'.

In its response, the Legal Action Group complained that the proposal effectively to cap fees for immigration and asylum legal aid work would lead to a deterioration in the quality of work undertaken because such work is not predictable.

Group director Alison Hannah said: 'To demoralise professionals like this will drive them out of their jobs.'

Several other groups, including the Law Society, have already come out strongly against the plan (see [2003] Gazette, 29 August, 4).

Chris Baker