In this paper we present two versions of the central localdiscontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method on overlapping cellsfor solving diffusion equations, and provide theirstability analysis and error estimates for the linear heat equation.A comparisonbetween the traditional LDG method ona single mesh and the two versions of the central LDGmethod on overlapping cells is also made.Numerical experiments are provided to validate the quantitativeconclusions from the analysis and to support conclusions forgeneral polynomial degrees.