Legal aid statistics: January to March 2023
Activity in the legal aid system for England and Wales, including criminal and civil legal aid, family mediation, providers of legal aid, client characteristics and Central Funds payments.
Applies to England and Wales
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The quarterly legal aid statistics bulletin presents statistics on the legal aid scheme administered by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) for England and Wales. This edition comprises the first release of statistics for the three month period from January to March 2023 and also provides the latest statement of figures for all earlier periods. This edition also includes figures on central funds, providers of legal aid, inquests and the diversity of clients receiving legal aid. These statistics are derived from data held by LAA, produced and published by Legal Aid Statistics team of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).
Link to Data visualisation tools, a web-based tools allowing the user to view and analyse charts and tables based on the published statistics.
Statistician’s Comment
This publication shows that expenditure across civil legal aid has increased year on year and has also increased more over the recent quarters. Criminal legal aid expenditure has recovered in the most recent quarter following the impact of strike action on the previous two quarters’ figures for the Crown Court, which in turn impacted workload completed and the associated expenditure.
Criminal legal aid workload for representation at the courts had returned to levels seen before covid but in the last few quarters there have been falls in both courts, suggesting a sustained fall in cases reaching court. In the last few quarters, we have seen a small increase in police station claims and an increase in representation orders at the magistrates’ court. Expenditure in the police station increased in the quarter again as expected due to higher fees for police station advice that were introduced at the end of September 2022. Extended sentencing powers at the magistrates’ court, since temporary implementation in May 2022, has been feeding through to overall volumes with less committals for sentence arriving at the Crown Court and subsequently more trial work held at the lower court.
Civil legal aid volumes and expenditure show a varied picture compared to last year. Overall civil expenditure is returning to pre-pandemic levels driven by large increases in family law expenditure with the number of claims being paid outside of the fixed fee scheme increasing due to more time being taken during the court process. Other non-family workload has not recovered to the same extent, and this is driven by a slow recovery of housing work although in the last quarter this has increased. Overall civil legal aid workload still remains below pre-pandemic levels although trends are increasing in domestic violence, mental health and, within exceptional case funding and legal help, immigration.
Within this annual release covering both diversity and legal aid provider information there have been no changes across the schemes in the proportions of legal aid work by sex, disability status, ethnicity and age band of the client. Overall, the number of providers both providing and contracted to deliver legal aid services has fallen in recent years. We are still seeing falls in the civil legal aid area but in the past year have seen a rise in the number of criminal legal aid providers completing work.
Figures are released, on an experimental basis, covering the criminal legal aid data share between the Legal Aid Agency, The Law Society, The Bar Council and the Crown Prosecution Service. This ongoing series will provide access to detailed information about the legal aid market with even more granular data available in the accompanying analysis tool.
Pre-release
Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:
Ministry of Justice
Secretary of State for Justice, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Permanent Secretary, Head of Legal Aid Policy (2), Special Advisor Inbox, Legal Aid Policy Officials (3), Press Officers (5), Digital Officers (2), Private secretaries (5), Legal Aid Analysis (2)
Legal Aid Agency
Chief Executive, Chief Executive’s Office, Head of Financial Forecasting, Senior Commissioning Manager, Director of Finance Business Partnering, Service Development Managers (2), Exceptional and Complex Cases Workflow Co-ordinator, Change Manager
Last updated 17 July 2023 + show all updates
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Criminal legal aid data share csv files added
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First published.