Welfare law and Community legal services

Scottish Legal Aid Board

www.slab.org.uk

Site includes the latest annual report, news, and a section for lawyers including legal aid forms and the legal aid handbook.

Legal Services Agency

www.lsa.org.uk

Scotland’s largest law centre: details of its work and some free literature on welfare law topics.

Govan Law Centre

www.govanlc.com

Another Scottish law centre: the site contains details of its work and sizeable amounts of legal information in welfare law areas.

Citizens Advice Bureaux

www.adviceguide.org.uk

The national website of the two UK CAB organisations: provides up-to-date information on wide range of legal issues affecting the ordinary citizen; customisable by UK country/region.

Community Legal Service Direct

www.clsdirect.org.uk

The Community Legal Service Direct website allows searching for legal information and advice (links to other sites) and provides a directory of community legal service providers.

Department of Work and Pensions

www.dwp.gov.uk

Home page of the DWP, responsible for social security.

All the DWP publications, and the archived publications of the old DSS, can be accessed at www.dwp.gov.uk/resourcecentre/. Short and detailed guides to all the main benefits are found here.

Child Support Agency

www.csa.gov.uk

Complete guide to the whole scheme, both before and after March 2003, together with downloadable leaflets on Child Support payments and enforcement.

Steve Donnison

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk

This is a very claimant-centred site maintained by an enthusiastic freelancer. It contains among other things detailed guides to various welfare law benefits as well as links and commentary to various court and commissioner decisions. Quite different from the official sites.

Housing Benefit

www.hbinfo.org

Plain vanilla site with lots of information about the housing benefit scheme provided independently. Also contains text of regulations and circulars and much more. Most material only available to subscribers.

RightsNet

www.rightsnet.org.uk

Useful site run by London welfare rights organisations. Provides up-to-date news on welfare benefits, leaflets, discussion forum and job advertisements.