When did you last get a pay rise? Last year? The year before?
The government has not increased the fees of civil legal aid providers for twenty-eight years.
Yes, that is not a typo. 28 years.
The fees that legal aid providers can get from the government are the same today as in 1996.
After doing a rough inflation calculation, we reckon that legal aid fees should now be nearly triple the current fees.
So, the fees are very low if you can’t find a family mediation service offering legal aid.
Family legal aid is a ‘loss maker’ for half of providers
Just one in three private law family legal aid providers cover their costs when they offer the service to clients.
They attribute this to a combination of low legal aid fees, the high cost of delivering that legal aid and the delays in receiving payment from the government.
Those firms that still offer legal aid can only do so by subsidising the service with the money they make from other clients.