Corporate report

Legal Aid Agency Business Plan 2022 to 2023

Published 17 February 2023

Applies to England and Wales

1. Foreword

1.1 Legal Aid Agency Chief Executive Jane Harbottle

I am delighted to introduce the 2022-23 business plan which sets out our priorities and plans for the year ahead and highlights some of our many achievements of the last year.

Over the course of the last 2 reporting years, we have faced unprecedented challenges presented by the pandemic. The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) will continue to play a central role in the wider recovery and strengthening of our civil and criminal justice systems.

We will do this by providing a quality service for our service users and providers that is accessible, accountable and responsive. A service that:

• supports the rebuilding of public confidence in the justice system

• builds upon our reputation with both the public we serve and our providers

• supports our people to fulfil their potential in an organisation where they feel they belong

We continue to deliver to a high standard across all areas of the business. Strong leadership across the agency was recognised in our People Survey results. These saw us maintain our positive scores in relation to leadership and change and line management. We also improved inclusion and fair treatment scores. We remain in the top 10 Civil Service departments with an engagement score of 71%. Our people priorities for the year are focused on:

• being a diverse, responsive and learning organisation

• tackling unacceptable behaviour

• building the capability of our people

Our People Plan and the LAA Strategy emphasise the importance of our people in everything we do. In 2021-22 we retained our Disability Confident employer accreditation and developed an LAA Disability Action Plan. We also continued to work with our race network BeUnique to deliver our Race Action plan.

In terms of our business transformation, development of our Apply service will continue. More than 50 providers are using Apply to submit applications in domestic abuse cases, with over 10,000 applications successfully coming through the new service so far. New features have been introduced so the service can handle multiple proceedings and directly verify applicants’ income levels using data from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

This reduces the need for applicants to submit evidence. We look forward to continuing to develop capabilities to allow section 8 (civil) and public law family applications through the service. We also want to bring more firms on board who deal with these application types.

We will continue to support the rollout of the Common Platform digital case management system in criminal courts. This ensures we can process applications and bills for cases coming through the platform. The platform is now live in 112 courts across England and Wales. So far, we have processed around 48,000 applications, paying more than 15,000 bills. We continue to work closely with HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) to support the remainder of the national rollout.

Looking ahead we will continue our journey towards becoming a truly learning organisation. We will learn from our experiences of the last 2 years and continue to support and listen to the needs of our staff and customers alike.

We are recruiting 2 internal legal trainee solicitors to work across the Public Defender Service, Exceptional and Complex Cases and Central Legal Teams. This will enable the trainees to gain both civil and criminal legal experience

The year ahead is set to be demanding. We will work closely with MoJ colleagues to successfully implement measures set out in government responses to the consultations on the:

• independent criminal legal aid review

• legal aid means test review

This includes making necessary changes to contracts. We will also make the necessary operational changes flowing from other aspects of the government’s legislative programme following conclusion of the parliamentary process.

There is much to do, and I am looking forward to delivering against our plan.

2. Introduction

2.1 We are part of the Ministry of Justice

The work of the LAA contributes toward the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) strategic outcome:

2.2 Deliver swift access to justice

Supported by the MoJ strategic enablers for 2022-23:

1. Workforce, skills, location

2. Innovation, technology, data

3. Delivery, evaluation, collaboration

4. Sustainability

2.3 Our shared MoJ values

Purpose

Justice matters. We are proud to make a difference for the public we serve.

Humanity

We treat others as we would like to be treated. We value everyone, supporting and encouraging them to be the best they can be.

Openness

We innovate, share, and learn. We are courageous and curious, relentlessly pursuing ideas to improve the services we deliver.

Together

We listen, collaborate and contribute, acting together for our common purpose.

2.4 LAA vision

To support swift access to justice, through working with others to achieve excellence in the delivery of legal aid.

2.5 LAA mission

Work with providers of our services to ensure fair, prompt and effective access to civil and criminal legal aid and advice in England and Wales. We work across the whole of the justice system to make sure our services meet the needs of everyone who uses them. This includes the most vulnerable in our society.

2.6 LAA strategic enablers 2022-23

• user-centred

• right decisions, first time

• simplified and sustainable

• responsive, diverse, learning organisation

3. Our achievements in 2021-22

As we look back on milestones and performance areas for the last year against our strategic objectives, we consider:

• how well we performed against targets

• whether our performance improved on the previous year

4. Strategic objective 1 – service delivery

Delivering access to justice through legal aid services that meet the needs of our users

4.1 Strategic enablers

Following a user-centred approach in the way we work with our stakeholders and customers, striving to ensure we make right decisions first time

4.2 Milestones

status	target
achieved	implementing a customer services strategy – putting users of our services and their confidence in the quality of our services first
achieved	responsive Public Defender Service – gaining Lexcel reaccreditation by December 2021
achieved	building on positive changes to our services introduced by our response to the COVID-19 pandemic
delayed	Working closely with colleagues in MoJ to implement recommendations from the criminal legal aid review and the means test review.

Delivery of the delayed milestone was conditional on the MoJ consulting on certain legal aid policy recommendations. Sir Christopher Bellamy’s Independent Review of Criminal Legal Aid, was published on 15 December 2021. The government then considered the findings and recommendations before publishing its response and launching a consultation on the policy proposals on 15 March 2022. The means test review consultation was launched on the same date, and both consultations closed on 7 June 2022.

4.3 Performance indicators

Funding cases

	target	status achieved
civil applications	85%	94% in 20 days – minus 1% on 2021/22
crime applications	90%	Target is 90% in 2 working days and we achieved 100% which is the same as 2021-22
exceptional complex cases	80%	82% in 25 days – this is a new measure for 2021-22
civil amendments	75%	We processed 86%, end to end, in 20 working days – this is a new measure for 2021-22

Paying for cases

	target	status achieved
bill payments	95%	we paid 99% in 20 days matching 2021-22

Contacting us

	target	call handling
civil and crime calls	75%	we answered 83% of civil calls and 92% of crime calls in 5 minutes or less
Public Defender Service	90%	we accepted 99% of duty solicitor calls – this is a new measure for 2021-22

When you want to discuss our services, or challenge decisions

	target	responses
first and second tier complaints	90%	we responded to 100% of complaints in 20 working days – matching 2020-21

	target	status achieved
civil bills appeals	95%	we processed 100% where an external adjudicator not required, in 20 working days – this is a new measure for 2021-22
civil application appeals	95%	we processed 90%, where an external adjudicator not required, in 20 working days – this is a new measure for 2021-22

5. Strategic objective 2 – finance and efficiency

Modernise our services, delivering value for money for taxpayers

5.1 Strategic enablers

Focused on a ‘right decisions, first time’, approach and simplified and sustainable services

5.2 Milestones

status	target
achieved	as business transformation continues, further development of our Apply service including progressing through Government Digital Service assessment
achieved	development of our debt strategy, focused on efficient but appropriate recovery of taxpayers’ money
achieved	implementation of the Debt Respite Scheme (Breathing Space Moratorium and Mental Health Crisis Moratorium) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020

5.3 Performance indicators

Accuracy of our payments

Our net error rate for 2021-22 was 0.77% compared with 0.89% in 2020-21. We carry out core testing throughout the year to arrive at these figures.

Our funding and administrative spending remained within budgets. We achieved this through forecasting and ensuring COVID-19 contingency arrangements were proportionate.

6. Strategic objective 3 – people

Become a truly diverse and inclusive employer of choice

6.1 Strategic enablers

Looking after our people and their development through being a responsive, diverse, learning organisation

6.2 Milestones

status	target
achieved	use our LAA people strategy as a roadmap supporting our goal for the LAA to be a great place to work for everyone
achieved	partner with our LAA staff networks to improve the experience for our people such as the work with our BeUnique network to empower change in tackling and eradicating racism
achieved	embed the LAA Workforce report in our reporting processes to increase our awareness and ability to monitor and act

6.3 Performance indicators

Health

As the COVID-19 pandemic has continued, during 2021-22 our average working days lost (AWDL) were at their lowest, 4.2 and highest, 6.9. This is based on the previous rolling 12-month period, measured against a Ministry of Justice target of below 5.3 days. Our end of year position at 2021-22 is 6.9 compared with an end of year position in 2020-21 of 4.2

Learning and development

We experienced data collation issues in calculating whether at least 75% of our staff achieved a minimum of 5 days learning in the year. However, of the LAA staff who completed the annual Civil Service People Survey, 55% responded positively. They said learning and development activities completed while working for the LAA were helping them to develop their career. This equalled the positive response to this question in the 2020 People Survey.

Bullying and harassment

Based on the annual Civil Service People Survey, new measures for 2021-22 were:

• number of our people who answered ‘prefer not to say’ to the bullying and harassment question decreased

• where people said they have experienced bullying and harassment their formal reporting of it decreased

• number of our people who felt that their bullying and harassment report was dealt with effectively increased

• amount of people who feel the culture in their area allows this behaviour to continue increased

Representative of the people we serve

Applied across the year we introduced a new set of measures for 2021-22:

• percentage of our staff with no positive declaration for ethnicity and disability declaration reporting was 12.6% – our target was 10%

• our split between those identifying as male and female across the LAA was 39.6/60.4 – our target was 50/50

• 14.7% of our people declared as being from a diverse ethnic minority – our target was 14%

• 15.3% of our people declared as having a disability – our target was 16%

Following the 2020 People Survey we committed to three overarching actions as a result of feedback from our people:

1. Responsive

To be a responsive organisation – flexing how we work together to be productive, be well and deliver our best.

Activity included further development for our mental health allies, define future LAA mental wellbeing support and deliver an integrated wellbeing support offer for our managers

2. Diverse

To be a diverse organisation – with inclusive teams that represent the people of England and Wales

Actions included empowering managers to have coaching conversations with team members, implementing a network and champion partnership agreement and taking targeted action to support our disabled and diverse ethnic minority colleagues

3. Learning

To be a learning organisation – taking opportunities to grow together as individuals, leaders and teams

Our focus was on helping the organisation build the capability and behaviours needed to be culturally aware, delivering learning aimed at improving inclusivity and delivery of a cross agency leaders’ event

7. Our strategic objectives – 2022-23

7.1 Our focus for this year

As we look to 2022-23 we revisit our LAA Strategy, outlining our vision for the delivery of legal aid services. Our business plan delivers the detail for the current year on how we will deliver and support our strategy.

We understand our contribution to the MoJ strategic outcomes and how our strategic objectives deliver toward them. The work we do to achieve each of our objectives is designed to make our vision an everyday reality for people who rely on us.

For each objective we have specific areas of development and measures to understand how well we are doing. Over time our goals will change. So, we will keep using data from our measures and feedback from those who use our services to improve what we do.

Strategic objectives for year ahead

• delivering access to justice through legal aid services that meets the needs of our users

• modernise our services, delivering value for money for taxpayers

• become a truly diverse and inclusive employer of choice

Alongside our revised strategic objectives, when planning how we can achieve delivery of them, there are 4 key strategic enablers outlining how we want to deliver.

1. User-centred

We are a delivery organisation focused on user needs, improving the quality of our services and understanding our users’ experience of them. All users of our services, are our customers. We want their interactions with us to be as accessible and easy as possible. We will achieve this by building better, newer digital services and reducing our reliance on legacy technologies.

2. Right decisions, first time

Consistently good delivery against our performance targets supports our ‘right first time’ approach. We continually seek opportunities to drive up performance, challenge ourselves where we can do more and earn a consistently good reputation for doing so.

3. Simplified and sustainable

We use data and evidence to support decision-making and direct change. We challenge ourselves to continually identify where our services can be simplified to deliver improvement and reduce costs across the justice system. We focus on ensuring change is sustainable, providing long-term adaptable solutions that support relevant United Nations sustainable development goals.

4. A responsive, diverse, learning organisation

Our people are at the heart of our achievements, we support them to learn, develop and share their skills. We expand this approach by encouraging partnership working across the MoJ, wider government and the Civil Service.

8. Strategic objective 1

Delivering access to justice through legal aid services that meet the needs of our users

We are a delivery organisation focused on user needs, improving the quality of our services and our users’ experience of them. We work to recognise the different needs of people who use our services user groups and want them all to have confidence in the services we provide and for our services to respond to their needs.

8.1 Milestones

• ensure all service targets for 2022-23 are met to support the effective operation of the justice system

• policy reforms for implementation in 2022-23 are delivered through revised business processes and digital development ensuring continued, effective delivery of all legal aid services

• our Public Defender Service will provide access to justice for clients through continual coverage of services that meet their needs

• launch of our communications strategy with user needs at the heart and support for provider resources such as our training website and customer service webchats

8.2 Our related performance indicators

For applications from our clients:

We’ll maintain our targets of:

• 85% of applications for civil legal aid, end to end, within 20 working days

• 90% of applications for criminal legal aid within 2 working days

• 80% of Exceptional and Complex Cases applications in 25 working days

• 90% of applications for Exceptional Case Funding in 25 working days

• 90% of civil application appeals excluding Exceptional and Complex Cases that do not require an external adjudicator to be processed within 20 working days

• 75% of applications for civil amendments, excluding Exceptional and Complex Cases, processed end to end in 20 working days

For payments to providers:

We’ll maintain our targets of:

• 95% of complete, accurate, eligible bills paid within 20 working days – monies received in account by provider

• 95% of civil billing appeals that do not require an external adjudicator to be processed within 20 working days.

For correspondence:

We’ll maintain our standards of service and deliver:

• 90% of first tier initial complaints within 20 days, excluding CCST

• 90% of second tier, unresolved at first tier, complaints within 20 days

• 90% of MP correspondence within 20 days

We’ll align to statutory timeframes and respond on:

• 100% of Freedom of Information requests within 20 working days

• 100% of internal review requests within 20 working days

• 100% of Data Protection Act requests within 30 calendar days

Introduce a new measure for:

• 90% of Parliamentary Question responses within 48 hours – named day PQs within 24 hours

For our telephone service:

We’ll maintain telephone service standards:

• 75% of crime or civil calls to our customer services unit answered within 5 minutes

• 90% of duty solicitor calls offered to the Public Defender Service to be accepted

9. Strategic objective 2

Modernise our services, delivering value for money for taxpayers

We use data and evidence to support decision-making. We are focused on providing a credible service our users can have confidence in. We manage our contracts for legal aid services providing assurance of provider performance and use of public money.

On wider justice initiatives and pilots, we work with our operational teams and contracted providers. We value their contributions, ensuring that the LAA operates in line with policy and legislative intentions.

9.1 Milestones

1. Resources are able to work effectively and are deployed in support of the government’s agenda for the Civil Service.

2. Continue development and rollout of our transformation work strands, further expanding Apply to other case types and other efficiency driven change to make our services more user-centred and efficient. Crime Apply is due to go through an independent digital assurance assessment at the end of July 2022. This will be conducted by the Government Digital Service, which is responsible for assessing public-facing digital services. If Crime Apply successfully passes the assessment, it will move to the next phase of development known as ‘private beta’. This will involve live testing of the system with a small number of providers. It will also be possible to process domestic abuse, section 8 and public law applications through Apply.

3. Continue to support roll-out of the Common Platform programme.

4. Work closely with MoJ to:

• provide operational input into the government’s response to the independent review of criminal legal aid (CLAIR) and the means test review

• support implementation of the response

9.2 Our related performance indicators

Focused on accuracy and accountability:

Maintain our performance to:

• minimise our net error rate, ensuring it remains below 1%
• ensure our legal help net error rate remains below 0.75% over the year

Reduce avoidable rejections of civil bills:

• Ensure by no more than 15% of civil bills are rejected by the end of the year

Focused on financial management:

We’ll maintain our forecasting and oversight to:

• deliver our services within our agreed, legal aid admin spend
• monitor our legal aid fund spend to inform future planning and engagement with HM Treasury

Introduce a new measure:

We will collect no less than 95% of the debt recovery target in civil cases, excluding statutory charge, and 95% crime cases by year end

10. Strategic objective 3

Become a truly diverse and inclusive employer of choice

Our people are at the heart of our achievements, we support them to learn, develop and share their skills. We want to offer a working environment that celebrates our people as individuals and includes choice about how we collaborate to best meet business objectives.

We will:

• use our LAA People Strategy as a roadmap supporting our goal for the LAA to be a great place to work for everyone

• our LAA People Plan for delivery of objectives this year

10.1 Milestones

• take action regarding bullying, harassment and discrimination by delivering our ‘tackling unacceptable behaviour’ action plan – increasing knowledge, support and communication

• ensure flexible and hybrid working is tailored to the needs of our people

• supporting mental health and wellbeing through information, monitoring and support

• building the capability of our people through an inclusive learning and development offer with a data driven approach focused on training, coaching and mentoring.

10.2 Our related performance indicators

Ensure we are supporting our people to be productive and engaged:

• monitor our average working days lost through sickness at 5.3 working days per year or less

• increase percentage of positive People Survey responses saying ‘learning and development activities I have completed while working for my organisation are helping me develop my career’

We have a zero-tolerance approach to bullying and harassment and work to ensure our people feel they are appropriately supported if issues are reported:

• reducing the amount of staff who answer ‘prefer not to say’ to the bullying and harassment question in the People Survey

• increase in the number of those who report it having said they have experienced it

• increasing the amount of staff who feel their Bullying and Harassment report was dealt with effectively

• decreasing the amount of staff who confirmed they feel the culture in their area allows this behaviour to continue

Representative of the people we serve:

• increase the level of our ethnicity and disability declaration reporting each year by reducing the % of staff with no positive declaration, from 14% to 10% during the year

• 50/50 split between those identifying as male and female across the LAA with further analysis by grade to drive further equality where needed

• 14% or above of our people declared as being from a diverse ethnic minority across the LAA with further analysis by grade to drive further equality where needed

• 16% or above of our people declared as having a disability across the LAA with further analysis by grade to drive further equality where needed

Every year the annual Civil Service People Survey is the main source of information across the LAA for the views of our people. We consistently achieve high levels of participation.

Corporate actions from People Survey

Here are the top 4 headline corporate actions that we will take as a result of the People Survey:

Bullying, harassment and discrimination

Our people want us to take action regarding bullying, harassment and discrimination, tackle unacceptable behaviour and take action when issues are raised.

Pay and benefits

While there has been a score improvement in 2021 based on the recent pay changes, it’s likely satisfaction with this area will drop moving forward. People Survey comments already indicate this is a significant concern for our staff.

Learning and development

While the LAA remains the highest scoring department in the MOJ for learning and development, there has been a drop in the overall satisfaction levels in 2021. Our people are telling us that time needs to be made available for learning. There also need to be more development conversations and better links between development and career progression.

Hybrid/flexible working

This is a significant area of concern for people with the return of office working.

11. Appendix

11.1 Director of Legal Aid Casework

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) ensured that the decision-making process for legal aid applications remained independent from ministers. The Director of Legal Aid Casework (DLAC), a role created by LASPO, has responsibility for making decisions on individual applications for legal aid. The LAA’s chief executive currently undertakes this role, in practice delegating decision-making to LAA caseworkers and providers. The Legal Aid Agency board supports the director to ensure that robust practices are in place to maintain the independence of the decision-making process. The DLAC report is published annually, separately from the annual report and accounts.

11.2 Living within our means

As part of the Ministry of Justice, we will contribute to the overall required reduction in spend at departmental level. Our fiscal resource departmental expenditure limit out-turn for 2021-22 and budget for 2022-23 are set out below:

	Actuals 2021-22	Budget 2022-23
Fund	£1,750.6m	£1,934.8m
LAA operations	£49.1m	£53.7m

These figures represent the Legal Aid Agency’s (LAA) delegated resource departmental expenditure limits (RDEL) budget and out-turn against this budget in each year. These costs do not match directly to the operational expenditure presented in the LAA annual report and accounts. These show the total expenditure incurred by the LAA including recharges from across the MoJ for support services.

11.3 Managing our risks

The agency’s approach to risk management is supported by its assurance framework which follows HM Treasury best practice. The framework identifies 3 lines of defence, which are:

1. Frontline operational arrangements to manage risk. For example risk registers, routine system controls and other management information.

2. Second line assurance activities is the oversight of management activity. This involves expert guidance, monitoring and compliance reviews to assure the effectiveness of frontline arrangements on risk and control.

3. Independent and more objective assurance of LAA’s control processes, from:

• National Audit Office – external audit

• Government Internal Audit Agency – internal audit

The 3 lines of defence are designed to:

• provide sufficient, continuous and reliable assurance on our organisational stewardship

• manage the major risks to our organisational success and delivery of improved, cost effective legal aid services

Further detail on our risks and our financial performance can be found in the annual governance statement which will be published as part of the LAA annual report and accounts.

Functional standards

During 2022-23 we will be embedding functional standards in the LAA. Functional standards exist to create a coherent, effective and mutually understood way of doing business within government organisations and across organisational boundaries.

Also, to provide a stable basis for assurance, risk management and capability improvement. They support value for money for the taxpayer, and continuity of implementation.

These standards are mandated for use across central government and arms length bodies:

Mandating functional standards