Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the Legal Aid Agency’s methodologies are for assessing demand and capacity for civil legal aid for all categories of law.

The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) is responsible for commissioning legal aid services in England and Wales. The LAA manages capacity in a number of ways. The LAA’s network of regional contract managers located throughout England and Wales provide intelligence-led information based on contact with legal aid service providers. In addition, the LAA frequently reviews market capacity to make sure there is adequate provision for legal aid, in all categories of law, and moves quickly where issues arise to secure provision.

The commissioning and monitoring of legal aid services are done by Procurement Area or Access Point, with Procurement Areas differing for different categories of law. The commissioning standard is to have at least one provider in each civil category per Procurement Area, outside Family Law where the minimum is five.

Information about the number of legal aid providers contracted to provide services are published as part of the LAA’s statistics. These statistics are used by the LAA as management information to monitor the capacity of legal aid services over time, in different areas of law and different regions of England Wales.