Legal Aid Scheme

Justice written question – answered at on 12 March 2009.

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Photo of Austin Mitchell Austin Mitchell Labour, Great Grimsby

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many legal firms have (a) stopped and (b) started doing legal aid work in each of the last five years.

Photo of Shahid Malik Shahid Malik Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice

Table 1 shows the number of solicitor offices starting legal aid work as part of the Criminal Defence Service (CDS) for criminal matters and the Community Legal Service (CLS) for civil matters in each of the last five financial years.

Table 2 shows the number of solicitor offices leaving the Criminal Defences Service in each of the past five financial years. For the Community Legal Service the table shows the combined total of solicitors offices leaving plus accounts expiring or terminated.

The figures are given in terms of numbers of offices rather than firms. This is because prior to the introduction of the civil unified contract in April 2007 and criminal unified contract in July 2008, legal aid providers delivering services in more than one office would hold separate contracts for each of those offices. In addition, where providers have decided not to continue providing civil legal aid services, they may nevertheless still have an account or accounts with the Legal Services Commission while they continue to deal with their remaining clients.

Over the period there has been a downward trend in the overall number of solicitor offices dealing with legal aid. This is because there has been a continuing process of offices that do only small amounts of legal aid work leaving the market or merging with other offices, so that the work is done in larger volumes at fewer offices. In addition, the Legal Services Commission has over time sought to terminate dormant accounts where no work was being done.

The key issue in delivering access to clients is ensuring there are sufficient providers in the right places to deliver a good level of service. At 31 March 2008 there were a total of 3,627 civil provider offices and 2,230 crime provider offices. More importantly, the number of acts of assistance delivered to legal aid clients has increased over the last few years. Clients can also access civil legal advice from not-for-profit organisations, plus the Community Legal Advice telephone line and website.

Table 1: Number of solicitor offices starting legal aid work as part of the CDS and CLS
CDS CLS
2003-04 161 128
2004-05 109 124
2005-06 144 138
2006-07 75 73
2007-08 100 (1)32
Table 2: Number of solicitor offices leaving the CDS and CLS plus accounts expiring
CDS CLS
2003-04 296 255
2004-05 246 270
2005-06 209 (2)1,131
2006-07 171 471
2007-08 127 208
(1) Although the LSC ran a civil bid round in late 2007, it can take some time for providers to start work after a successful application for a new contract, so several new providers would not have appeared on the LSC's systems until the next financial year.

(2) This is due to an exercise to clear dormant accounts.

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