Legal aid statistics quarterly: April to June 2026
Activity in the legal aid system for England and Wales, including criminal and civil legal aid, family mediation, providers of legal aid and central funds payments.
Applies to England and Wales
Documents
Details
Legal aid statistics publication 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 April to June 2026 and also provides the latest statement of figures for all earlier periods. This edition also includes figures on central funds, provider contracts and management information on Police station accredited representative numbers. These statistics are derived from data held by LAA, produced and published by Legal Aid Statistics team of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).
Data files the source for the key statistics on activity in the legal aid system for England and Wales in .csv (Comma delimited) format are published on Legal aid statistics: April to June 2026 data files.
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
While figures have been released for civil representation, the system backlog and restart date in December 2025 does mean that data in this area shows an above average volume of starts, grants and completions. It is anticipated that this backlog and temporary increase in workload and expenditure will return nearer to normality within a few quarters. However, care should be taken when comparing to the same period in the previous year.
At the Crown Court, the relatively unchanged workload during the period of contingency following the cyber-attack demonstrates the prioritisation of these claims and payments made. After the initial fall in the first two quarters of 2025, payments are recovering and the shortfall in the most recent quarters shows a scheme that has returned to its initial state, with small falls seen in both fee schemes only.
Figures covering completions in legal help, mediation and crime lower are again provided and are drawn from the new data collection system. Issues from data submitted from the months during the cyber-attack impact are minimal but are usually due to timing of the data entry on the new system rather than when the work was completed. Figures are broadly in line with the previous year across all three schemes but in all three areas care should be undertaken when looking at smaller levels of breakdown.
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, Second Permanent Secretary, Head of Legal Aid Policy (2), Special Advisor Inbox, Legal Aid Policy Officials (7), Press Officers (4), Digital Officers (2), Private secretaries (5), Legal Aid Analysis
Legal Aid Agency
Chief Executive, Chief Executive’s Office, Senior Commissioning Manager, Director of Finance Business Partnering, Service Development Managers (2), Exceptional and Complex Cases Workflow Co-ordinator, Change Manager