Key members of a leading Community Legal Services Partnership (CLSP) are looking to defect to a stronger grouping, causing further concerns about the future of the entire partnership regime.

Central London Law Centre, formerly affiliated with the Westminster CLSP, has asked to join the nearby Camden partnership after the Legal Services Commission (LSC) wrote to members suggesting that they only congregate twice a year and do the rest of their partnership work by e-mail.


Administrator Valerie Clark said the centre already had links with Camden and felt this was the best way forward in keeping it in a partnership. But she warned: 'The voluntary sector dealing with people in most need [in Westminster] will now have no voice or contact with the LSC over the most important decisions affecting its future.'


An LSC spokesman insisted it had not withdrawn support and said the Westminster CLSP was still in operation, adding that it made sense for more mobile clients to travel to other LSC sub-regions to receive advice.


But Sara Chandler, from the Camden CLSP, said the LSC's limited support was not good enough, and argued that other areas of London were also suffering. 'I am disappointed but not surprised that [members of] Westminster CLSP have given up the unequal struggle to keep alive a partnership when the major partner [the LSC] has withdrawn,' she said.


The Legal Aid Practitioners Group urged the LSC to reinstate its backing, amid concerns that only a handful of partnerships would survive otherwise. '[The Westminster situation] vindicates our concern that without continuing LSC support, many partnerships will not survive,' director Richard Miller said.