Legal aid statistics: July to September 2021
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.
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Details
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 July to September 2021 and also provides the latest statement of figures for all earlier periods. These statistics are derived from data held by LAA, produced and published by Legal Aid Statistics team of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).
Statistician’s Comment
This publication shows that completed workload and the associated expenditure has increased year on year and has also increased more over the recent quarters, due to recovery from covid-19, across both the criminal legal aid and civil legal aid schemes. Some areas have seen large increases and this is mainly due to comparisons against unusually low volumes of workload in the early stages of the pandemic and in some instances within the report comparisons are also given against pre-covid-19 volumes, in order to provide a comparison against pre-covid-19 levels of activity.
Criminal legal aid expenditure increased compared to the same quarter last year in schemes that support the court system, including the magistrates’ and Crown Court. The incoming workload for representation at the courts had returned to levels seen in the period pre-covid-19 but in the most recent period we’ve seen falls in both courts. Complex trial cases ongoing at the Crown Court are not completing at the same rate as pre-covid-19. There are large increases in expenditure this quarter when comparing to the post-covid-19 quarter from last year, however when compared to pre-covid-19 and two years previously, expenditure has still not fully recovered.
Civil legal aid volumes and expenditure show a mixed picture compared to the same quarter last year. Overall, family law and mediation expenditure has returned to pre-pandemic levels. In July to September 2021, non-family law expenditure remains 12% lower than the same quarter in the pre-covid-19 period. This is driven by the slow recovery of housing work following the impact of covid-19. Overall civil legal aid workload still remains below pre-pandemic levels, by around 11%.
It was expected that criminal and civil legal aid volumes would return to, and even temporarily exceed, historic trend levels and more recent falls could be due to this return to normal levels or impact from further lockdowns.
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, Director General Chief Financial Officer Group, Directors of Data and Analysis (2), Head of Access to Justice Policy, Deputy Director Legal Aid Policy, Chief Statistician, Special Advisor Inbox, Legal Aid Policy Officials (4), Press Officers (4), Digital Officers (2), Private secretaries (5), Head of Legal Aid Analysis (2)
Legal Aid Agency
Chief Executive, Chief Executive’s Office, Head of Financial Forecasting, Senior External Communications Manager, Director of Finance Business Partnering, Service Development Managers (2), Exceptional and Complex Cases Workflow Co-ordinator, Change Manager