Fee uplift not enough to fix civil legal aid crisis, says CILEX 

The Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) civil legal aid fee uplift, announced in July, is “insufficient to sustain the legal aid market” and will not be enough to encourage providers to take up legally aided work in housing and immigration, according to CILEX.

While acknowledging that the uplift – from an hourly rate ranging from £45.95£-48.74, to £65.35-69.30 (non-London/London) – was both welcome and “monumental” in the light of current budgetary restraints, CILEX said it did not believe this would attract new lawyers into the sector or even sustain current levels of civil legal aid provision at a time of growing demand.

The additional funding follows on from the MoJ’s consultation Civil legal aid: Towards a sustainable future. In its response, CILEX said the administrative burden currently placed on providers acted as a barrier to taking on higher volumes of work. It supported plans to simplify fee structures, saying this would “benefit practitioners” and “relieve some of the substantial pressure they face”.

Its response highlighted access to justice concerns and the diminishing number of legal aid providers available to take on more legal aid work, impacting on recruitment of the next generation of lawyers, which in turn would see “the pool of legal aid providers becoming smaller and smaller”.

In announcing the outcome of the consultation, the government also said minimum hourly rates for ‘controlled work’ (initial advice and assistance and representation in the first-tier tribunals) and licensed work (where legal representation before a court is likely to be needed) would be made the same to reduce administrative time and costs.

CILEX cautiously agreed with the change but highlighted that the complexity of the work, the administrative differences between the two types and the level of expertise required should be considered when fees were calculated “to complement the differences in work”. These concerns, echoed by others in the sector, were acknowledged by the government.

Then CILEX president Yanthé Richardson said: “By acknowledging that there is a crisis in civil legal aid and proposing an uplift in fees, the government is taking a positive step towards reversing the decline in the sector. Unfortunately, as it stands these reforms will not be enough to increase the number of firms willing to take on legal aid work and to train the young people who will be the housing and immigration lawyers of the future.”