Today I am laying before Parliament the Government’s response to the consultation “Civil Legal Aid: Towards A Sustainable Future”.
Civil legal aid providers face serious challenges around staff retention, profitability, and sustainability, meaning that support can be hard to access for many of those who need it most. This is particularly acute in housing and immigration.
The consultation paper was published on 24 January 2025. It invited responses on proposals to increase civil legal aid fees for housing and debt (hereafter, “housing”) work, and immigration and asylum (hereafter, “immigration”) work. It also sought evidence on potential changes to contractual requirements.
After considering the responses, we have decided to uplift the rates paid for all housing and immigration legal aid work. Overall spending in these categories will increase by 24% and 30% respectively. This represents a significant investment—the first since 1996—an increase of £20 million a year once fully implemented.
Alongside this, we are taking steps to simplify and harmonise certain fees. This will reduce administrative burdens for providers, simplify billing, and allow them to spend more time helping their clients.
This investment will help to ensure effective access to justice for some of the most vulnerable in our society, supporting a more stable and sustainable legal aid sector—one that is fit for the future and attracts and retains the brightest and the best practitioners.
It will also help us deliver our wider Government ambitions, with investment in immigration legal aid vital to supporting this Government’s ambition to end hotel use and increase returns. The investment in housing legal aid will help ensure a sustainable sector as we expand housing rights in the Renters’ Rights Bill.
The uplifts will be implemented as soon as operationally possible, at which point we intend to bring forward a statutory instrument to amend the Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 to reflect the fee changes.
Through the consultation, we have also gathered further important evidence to progress our thinking on potential changes to the current office and remote advice requirements set out in the standard civil contract. Using this evidence, we will continue to review the standard civil contract in these areas and consider next steps to ensure that we are supporting clients and providers as effectively as possible in the civil legal aid system.
I will place copies of the consultation response in the Libraries of the House.
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