Legal Aid Scheme

(asked on 17th November 2014) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many applications were (a) made and (b) granted for exceptional case funding for legal aid in each year from 2009 to 2014 in (i) the UK and (ii) Wales.


Answered by
Shailesh Vara Portrait
Shailesh Vara
This question was answered on 20th November 2014

The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) does not record Exceptional Case Funding (ECF) applications for the UK as a whole as it is responsible for the operation of the legal aid scheme in England and Wales. The LAA could only provide data for Wales at disproportionate cost as the location of ECF applicants has not always been recorded centrally.

The current legal aid ECF scheme in England and Wales was introduced from April 2013 under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO). Prior to the introduction of LASPO there was a category of legal aid funding termed ‘exceptional funding’. Statistics relating to legal aid in England and Wales including the current ECF scheme are regularly published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/legal-aid-statistics.

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