Transforming criminal legal aid

On this page:

Increasing the number of people we help
How we’re changing criminal legal aid
What’s the impact on criminal legal aid providers?
For more information

Increasing the number of people we help

We need to modernise how we buy legal aid services. By achieving best value for money and rebalancing the overall budget to provide more funding for civil work, we can continue to increase the numbers of people helped.

We outlined our legal aid reform programme in November 2006.

How we’re changing criminal legal aid

We need to base criminal legal aid on a sustainable footing to make sure resources go to those who really need them.

We’ve already reintroduced means testing in the magistrate’s court. This is on track to save £35 m/yr.

Moving to a market based system will make sure that we buy criminal legal aid services at the best price for the taxpayer.

In the meantime fixed, graduated and standard fees will encourage efficiency and help the market prepare for wider competition from October 2008.

What’s the impact on criminal legal aid providers?

An impact assessment for phase one of our reform programme is under Documents.

This assessment is based on data that assumes providers will not change their ways of working in light of the reforms. In practice, providers are already changing the way they work.

As a result, we expect the real impacts will be less than shown in the assessment.

The assessment shows that following the reforms already in place:

overall funding for criminal legal aid work will reduce by £15.5m and 65% of providers can expect to see their income decrease
however for 65% of these the reduction will be less than 10%
funding will reduce in every LSC region: rural areas will be least affected and urban areas most affected.

The assessment also considers the impact on particular groups such as those with a disability or poeple from ethnic minorities.

For more information

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

Visit the Criminal justice system initiatives page to read about our work to improve efficiency within the criminal justice system.

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Last updated: 14 January 2008