Press Releases pre-May 2010

Nearly 800,000 cases of civil legal help were funded by legal aid over the last year, up 12.5 percent, making this the second record-breaking year in a row.

Figures announced today by the Legal Services Commission (LSC) show the greatest number of civil cases in a year since the LSC was set up in 2000.

In 2006/07 people with civil legal problems got legal aid help for matters including debt, employment, housing, mental health and family law, which includes domestic violence, children taken into care and resolving contact disputes.

Civil legal aid was given to people in two ways:

• face to face advisers delivered 685,244 new civil legal cases, an eight percent increase on last year



• telephone advisers from Community Legal Service Direct gave 111,319 acts of assistance - a 51  percent increase on last year’s total.

Debt advice was an area of particular growth, up 15% on last year.

The Chief Executive of the Legal Services Commission, Carolyn Regan said:

"The rising number of people getting legal aid to help them with their problems in housing, debt, family and other civil legal matters represents a major achievement, not least because it was done within a fixed budget. We are delighted to have helped so many more people, often those in greatest need, but this is also good news for the taxpayer. Our research¹ shows that more than 50% of civil legal problems lead to adverse outcomes like ill-health, unemployment and homelessness. So helping people resolve their problems before crisis point not only reduces personal tragedy but also mitigates the downstream costs to other public services."

Carolyn Regan continued:

"The increasing number of people seeking help shows that we are becoming more aware of our rights and where to go to for help. This increase in take up of civil legal aid chimes with research in 2006 which showed that greater numbers of people were taking action to resolve their legal problems. However, around one in ten people with legal problems still fails to seek advice. Our challenge remains clear: we must work even harder to reach that 10% of people. We must continue to innovate and increase the ease of access to services. We must expand our outreach and continue to help those who need it most.

“It is no coincidence that the growth in the number of people helped this year falls within the same period in which a new payment system has been introduced for our providers, legal aid lawyers and advice agencies. Tailored Fixed Fees, rather than the by-the-hour charging of the past, have been in place for much of this work. The current legal aid reforms are specifically about building on this to maximise access to legal aid for the future and continue increasing the numbers of people helped.”

The reforms also build on the Community Legal Service Strategy to focus on shaping services around clients’ needs. Research² shows that people commonly have several related problems but they often have to seek advice from different places for each one. It identifies a clear need for access to a range of advice through one entry point.

“We will be doing more work to ensure that advice is joined up and gives clients a seamless service across the range of family law and social welfare law including welfare benefits and debt or housing.  We are encouraging an environment where in future a client will be able to get in touch with an adviser and, through that one contact, access a full range of legal services.

“We will also be doing more to ensure consistent geographical access and we will focus on these issues as we continue to deliver more help for more people.” 

Case study

Helen was delighted when she was accepted on to a college performing arts course. However, Helen uses a wheelchair and her offer of a place was withdrawn by the college when it suddenly said she had failed to meet the required criteria for admission. The college tutors were reluctant to discuss the matter with Helen or her advisers. The client was convinced that the case involved disability discrimination.

Thanks to the phone advice she got from the Community Legal Service Direct, the College has now withdrawn its opposition to Helen attending and she has taken up her place and gets support for her disability.

Media contacts

For more information please contact:

Michaela Keating (Tel: 020 7759 0444)                    

Notes to Editors

To sustain numbers of high quality legal aid solicitors and advisers, the LSC introduced training grants in 2003 of up to £20,000 per person over a two-year period.

1. Taken from 2006 Causes of Action Research findings

(i) A third of civil justice problems affect people’s health. 18% of problems lead to stress-related ill-health, and 16% of problems lead to physical ill-health. 

Of those who had physical health problems:

• 4 in 5 needed medical treatment
• 2 in 3 treated by GPs required an average of six appointments
• 1 in 10 who are hospitalised spend an average of 9.5 days as in-patients.

(ii)16% of problems lead to loss of income or employment.

(iii) 6% lead to loss of home.

(iv) Civil problems can bring about and worsen social exclusion.

(v) Half of victims of crime also report a civil justice problem.

2. Taken from 2006 Causes of Action Research findings

Three principal and distinct problem clusters can be identified. Clustering of problems occurs when there is a tendency for particular problems to be experienced simultaneously or in sequence by the same person. An understanding of clustering can help us to develop advice and legal services that address people’s related needs. These are:

• ‘Family’ (domestic violence, divorce, relationship and children problems.)
• ‘Homelessness’ (rented housing, homelessness and benefits.)
• ‘Economic’ (money & debt, consumer, and employment problems.)