Transforming civil legal aid

On this page:

Interim changes to Family Graduated Fees
Next steps for family fees
Phase 1 Civil Fee Scheme consultation and report published
A routemap for civil legal aid contracts
Progress so far
For more information

Interim changes to Family Graduated Fees

Following the joint Ministry of Justice/Legal Services Commission consultation on interim changes to the Family Graduated Fee Scheme (Reforming the Legal Aid Family Barrister Fee Scheme), which governs payments to barristers, we have now published our way forward.

We published our formal response on 23 Feb 2009 on the Ministry of Justice website.

Key information on the way forward is already available on our Family Graduated Fees page.

Next steps for family fees

We have consulted on proposals to change the way we pay for family work.

Family Legal Aid Funding from 2010: A Consultation was launched on 17 Dec 08 and closed on 3 Apr 09.

The consultation focused on proposals for two new payment schemes:

Private Family Law Representation Scheme
Family Advocacy Fee Scheme.

Phase 1 Civil Fee Scheme consultation and report published

We launched a 6-week consultation on 1 Apr 09, Phase 1 Civil Fee Schemes Review – Proposed Amendments from 2010: A Consultation, setting out proposed amendments to civil fee schemes. The amendments follow a review of the Phase 1 Civil Fee Schemes carried out with the Civil Contracts Consultative Group.

The review report has been published separately from the consultation paper and can be found at:

CLS >Civil contracts >Agreement with The Law Society > Civil contracts consultative group

A route map for civil legal aid contracts

We remain committed to introducing new contracts in 2010 and making changes to the services we buy and how we pay for them. Equally, we will continue to provide:

certainty and stability to civil legal aid providers
giving them time to adapt to the changes already introduced
and allowing them to plan properly for future reforms.

Following consultation, we published final policy on the civil 2010 contracts and we expect to invite tenders for civil work in September 2009, with contracts starting from 1 April 2010.

Consultation delays

Consultations on Civil Bid Rounds for 2010 Contracts and Family Legal Aid Funding from 2010 were published slightly later than scheduled (last October and December respectively, rather than September).

This may affect future milestones outlined in our 'Route map for civil legal aid' - found in the documents panel on the right hand side of the Transforming civil legal aid page.
Furthermore, our report on the operation of stage 1 fees, and complementary six-week consultation on any changes to those fees, was pushed back from Jan to Mar 09.

We have discussed this with the main representative bodies that sit on our Civil Contracts Consultative Group, i.e. The Law Society, HLPA, ALC, ASA, LAPG, MHLA, ILPA and Resolution.

Consultation period to remain the same...

We would like to stress that we have no intention of reducing the amount of time legal aid providers and other stakeholders have to comment on consultations as a result of these delays.

Therefore, we remain committed to:

a 12-week consultation on Family Legal Aid Funding
and a six-week consultation on changes to the existing stage 1 fees.

Effect on the route map

Inevitably, the milestone changes mentioned above will have knock-on effects on our route map for civil legal aid in general.

For instance, we published our consultation response to civil bid rounds in June 09 and now plan to publish our consultation responses to family funding and changes to stage 1 fees later in the summer. This means that we won’t be in a position to invite tenders before September.

However, these timings remain subject to the outcomes of these consultations and our final proposals.

All current consultations can be found on our website.

Progress so far

We are introducing fixed and graduated fee schemes for civil, family and immigration legal aid.

We now have a single unified contract in place for all civil providers, ensuring consistency.

Our strategy for the CLS and the reforms coming out of it are focused on shaping services around clients’ needs.

We are introducing Community Legal Advice centres and networks across England and Wales to meet these needs.

For more information

Read more about our transformation programme on the About us>Transforming legal aid page.

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Last updated: 30 June 2009