Mahmood: Important step
The government today announced plans for an extra £20m for civil legal aid, the first increase in funding for the sector in nearly 30 years.
In January 2025, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) will consult on increasing legal aid fees for those working in housing and debt, and immigration and asylum.
This aim is to increase fees to a rate in the region of £65/£69 per hour (non-London/London), or provide a 10% uplift, whichever is higher.
Fixed fees will be uplifted by an amount proportional to the increase in the underlying hourly rate for that work.
This will be implemented in 2025-26, with costs scaling up to £20m by 2027-28. Civil legal aid fees were last increased in 1996.
The fees paid in other categories of civil legal aid remain under consideration.
According to the MoJ, it spent just over £1bn on civil legal aid in total in 2023/24 (on a ‘closed-case’ basis, meaning interim payments were excluded from the figure).
The MoJ said the fee uplift marked the first step in its response to the evidence gathered as part of the Review of Civil Legal Aid, which “demonstrated that both the housing and immigration sectors are under particularly acute pressure”.
It was timed to come ahead of Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood’s address to today’s Civil Justice Council National Forum on Access to Justice.
The announcement also follows the extra £24m announced last month for criminal legal aid, specifically police station and youth court fees, which it said was £3m more than what the Conservative government had proposed.
Ms Mahmood said: “This government is determined to improve the civil legal aid sector which was left neglected for years. This is an important step as we rebuild our justice system, ensuring it is fit for purpose for the society it serves and those who serve within it.”
The Law Society said it welcomed the news, but argued that it “must be followed with a commitment to much-needed investment in other areas of civil and criminal legal aid”.
President Richard Atkinson said: “The government now needs to restart the review of civil legal aid and provide a timetable for further investment, as well as steps to reduce the cost of delivering legal aid services, setting out a clear vision for putting this public service on a sustainable footing.”
Law Society-commissioned research earlier this year showed that all of the housing legal aid providers examined made a loss, while nearly half of the population in England and Wales do not have access to a local legal aid provider for housing advice.
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