Family Mediation Fee Scheme

On this page:

About the fee scheme
Details of the fees
Fee structure table
For more information

About the fee scheme

This fee scheme encourages the use of mediation, where it is appropriate, as an effective, less damaging and less expensive alternative to litigation.

It also:

ensures that clients have their problems properly assessed and diagnosed
rewards mediators who are successful in reaching an agreement.

Both legal and not-for-profit mediation services will be paid a single, family mediation fee structure from 1 October 2007. This will bring family mediation contracts in line with other civil contracts.

This is an approach supported by the recommendation of the National Audit Office report 'Legal aid and mediation for people involved in family breakdown'.

The report was published in March 2007 to bring the funding structures for family mediation into line.

Details of the fees

The fees is broken down as follows:

Willingness tests

We will pay a fixed fee of £25 for the willingness test.

This requires the mediation service to attempt to make initial contact with the other party letter and twice by telephone to determine whether they are willing to attend an assessment meeting and consider mediation.

Assessment meetings

At these meetings mediators review:

the client
their circumstances
their financial eligibility
their case’s suitability for mediation.

We will increase the fixed fee to:

£87 for mediators who see a client separately
£130 for those who see both parties together.

These increased fees will allow for an enhanced assessment meeting which will assist clients to proceed to mediation.

Mediation sessions

We will not change the time allowed for mediation as feedback indicates the current times are sufficient.

We have:

increased the Child Only multi-session case fee to reflect the work that may be carried out in consulting directly with children
increased fees for some types of cases where agreement is reached: £189 for Property and Finance agreed proposals and £252 for ‘All Issue’ agreed proposals. We feel the current rate of £126 for Child Only cases is still appropriate
amended the scope of the Family Help - Private fee scheme so that the requirement to conisder mediation will come at the end of Level 2, i.e prior to the issue of proceedings
amended the exemption from mediation for respondents facing a court date to six weeks

Re-referrals

Regardless of the outcome of the mediation, if the parties return to mediation within three months of the single session, or the last session, then the mediator should reopen the case if it relates to the same matter.

If more then three months have elapsed the mediator should treat the return visit as an entirely new application.

Fee structure table

Please see Related Documents for a fee structure table for the Family Mediation Fee Scheme.

The table sets out what we will pay for cases when the new schemes are introduced and aim to help providers to access key information more easily.

It is taken from our Family and Family Mediation Fee Schemes publication that sets out and explains the scheme. This document provides important additional information about the scheme such as:

any work outside the scheme
exceptional thresholds.

The fee table should be read in conjunction with this scheme paper.

For more information

Please visit the CLS>closed consultations pages:

for more information
to download the family and family mediation fee scheme.

Last updated: 19 September 2008