Legal Aid Scheme: South West
(asked on 8th April 2025) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she has taken to increase provision of legal aid in the south west of England.
Data regarding the number of civil legal aid providers in Truro and Falmouth is set out in the below table:
Year | Falmouth | Truro |
2011 |
| 8 |
2012 |
| 4 |
2013 |
| 8 |
2014 |
| 6 |
2015 |
| 6 |
2016 |
| 5 |
2017 |
| 9 |
2018 |
| 10 |
2019 | 1 | 5 |
2020 | 1 | 5 |
2021 | 1 | 5 |
2022 | 1 | 5 |
2023 | 1 | 5 |
2024 | 1 | 6 |
2025 | 1 | 7 |
The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) is responsible for commissioning legal aid services in England and Wales. The LAA monitors the numbers of providers in each procurement area and across all categories of law. It takes operational action to respond to market pressures that may arise and works closely with the Ministry of Justice on policy solutions concerning the supply of legal aid.
For civil contracts, the LAA aims to ensure supply across designated procurement areas, as opposed to specific towns or counties. The procurement areas may be different for different categories of law and the LAA aims to ensure the commissioning standard for each procurement area in each category of law is met throughout the life cycle of its contracts. The commissioning standard for the Southwest, which encompasses Truro and Falmouth, is currently met across all categories.
Generally, the LAA has changed its approach to commissioning for legal aid services. Procurement for legal aid contracts is now operated under the ‘always on principle’ so that the procurement remains open during the life of the contract. This is a significant change from the previous approach where firms could only bid to join at the initial tender of what typically was a five-year contract term. This new approach enables new entrants to apply for a contract at any time and for existing providers to expand their services. It is a more flexible approach, removing hard deadlines and maximising the available supply of services.
Further, the Ministry of Justice has undertaken a comprehensive review of civil legal aid and recently concluded a consultation on uplifts to housing & debt and immigration & asylum legal aid fees, which when implemented, would inject an additional £20 million into the sector each year. We are currently reviewing consultation responses and will publish the Government’s response in due course.