CLS news

The LSC and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) today responded to the consultation over proposals to reform payment for solicitors and barristers carrying out family legal aid work from October 2010.

About the new schemes

The family legal aid funding reforms are designed to protect services for children and families.

The idea is to ensure the future sustainability of legal aid in light of increasing costs in parts of the system.

The consultation focused on two payment schemes:

• Private Family Law Representation Scheme, which will bring private family work (excluding advocacy) within a standard fee regime
• Family Advocacy Scheme, which creates a single graduated fee scheme covering payments to both solicitor advocates and barristers for public and private family law cases

The consultation also dealt with the payment of some disbursements, including payments to Independent Social Workers.

The new schemes are designed to ensure that all professionals involved in family cases are paid equally for carrying out the same work.

This will ensure future cost control and that access to legal aid for vulnerable people is maintained.

The schemes will be implemented from October 2010.

Changes following consultation

The reforms announced today come as result of a substantial consultation process:

• A total of 1,491 consultation responses were received, all of which have been carefully considered when forming the final schemes
• As part of the consultation process we also ran a series of 47 provider workshops across England and Wales attended by more than 1,200 solicitors and barristers

As a result of the responses to the consultation as well as meetings with representative bodies and key stakeholders the schemes have been revised.

The Family Advocacy Scheme now recognises cases that may be particularly complex by paying on the basis of time at court and allowing uplifts for particular factors in the case.

Further information
 
LSC website: Family Legal Aid Funding from 2010

LSC website: Family Legal Aid Funding Consultation Documents (for Q&A documents to accompany response)

MoJ website: Family legal aid reforms put vulnerable families and children first

family@legalservices.gov.uk for further enquiries.