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Press Release

Legal Services Commission Annual Report 2005/06

20 July 2006

This year, through dedicated service providers, the Legal Services Commission helped more people with civil legal aid than at any point since 2000. Together with criminal legal aid the LSC funded over 160,000 more acts of assistance than in 2004/05. In total our legal aid funding helped more than two million people, 130,000 more through the Community Legal Service and 30,000 more through the Criminal Defence Service.

Key developments during 2005/06

These are essential to the legal aid reform programme and include:

• What legal aid services we intend to buy to meet clients needs – this has been defined in the Community Legal Service Strategy



• Who we buy legal aid services from – this is being developed through the Preferred Supplier consultation



• How we pay for legal aid services - Lord Carter’s review of legal aid procurement provides a framework for this.

The report contains details of our progress against each of our four Corporate Priorities:

1. Ensuring legal aid clients have access to services
2. Working with high quality service providers
3. Delivering an affordable scheme
4. Transforming our organisation.

Key achievements for 2005/06

This year we achieved or exceeded six out of nine corporate targets, and most importantly, more people got help with their problems. During the year the LSC:

• delivered over 708,510  acts of assistance through the Community Legal Service.  These figures represent a 15% increase on 2004/05 and are the most successful results in the history of the LSC



• delivered 1.6 million acts of assistance within the Criminal Defence Service



• maintained 100% coverage of the duty solicitor scheme



• drove up performance standards within publicly funded work by improving or removing all providers with whom we had identified concerns about quality or efficiency as at 31 July 2005



• implemented a number of changes within the legal aid system resulting in savings of over £120m



• achieved 91% against our target of 85% on the national customer service score



• launched a talent management programme to develop the potential of our staff and identify future senior executives



• increased the number of providers who process their claims online from 433 to 1,950, helping to improve efficiency.

ENDS

Media information

Daniel Kellingley   020 7759 0415

Notes to editors

1. The ‘financial reports’ (towards the back of the annual report) contain more detailed technical information including the financial statements, which are audited by the National Audit Office.

2. We present statistical information for 2005/06 in a more headline way than in previous years. A detailed statistical analysis of our work, including comparisons with 2004/05, can now be found on our website (on the same page as the annual report).

3. The annual report is published by The Stationery Office. It is available from their bookshops and costs £18.50. The annual report is available on our website at http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/aboutus/how/publications.asp

4. Press copies are available from Daniel Kellingley on 020 7759 0415 or email daniel.kellingley@legalservices.gov.uk

 

Last updated: 28 December 2006