Lord Chancellor announces fee increase for immigration and housing, calls it important step in rebuilding 'neglected' justice system
The Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, announced today that, subject to a consultation, legal aid fees will be increased for immigration and housing work.
Image credit: UK GovernmentIt will be the first rise in civil legal aid fees for almost 30 years.
The Ministry of Justice said in a press release: "In January 2025, the government will consult on increasing legal aid fees for those working in the housing (housing and debt) and immigration (immigration and asylum) sectors, aiming to increase fees to a rate in the region of £65/£69 per hour (non-London/London), or provide a 10% uplift, whichever is higher. Fixed fees will be uplifted by an amount proportional to the increase in the underlying hourly rate for that work. This will be implemented in 2025-26 with costs scaling up to £20 million by 2027-28."
Shabana Mahmood said the Government is determined to improve the civil legal aid sector, and the fee increase represents an important step in rebuilding the 'neglected' justice system.
As the Law Society notes, civil legal aid fees have not increased since 1996 and were cut by 10% in 2011.
Richard Atkinson, the president of the Law Society, said in response to today's announcement: "It is encouraging to see that the government has increased hourly rates by at least 10%, and in a few instances by up to 40%, recognising the importance of investing in civil legal aid to level the playing field for those seeking access to justice. Better availability of legal advice protects all people and communities and reduces the strain on other public services. This investment will help ease the huge asylum backlog, ensuring the efficient running of the system in a way that gets the right decision at the earliest opportunity."
Chair of the Bar Council, Sam Townend KC, said the increase was a welcome but overdue first step, emphasising the urgency of the situation and the need for further investment to address a crisis caused by decades of underfunding. The Bar Council said it would consider the detailed proposals in the consultation and whether the investment will be sufficient to stem the exodus of practitioners.
Asylum Aid said it was delighted by the increase, noting that the stagnation in legal aid funding had decimated the sector to such an extent that more than half of people seeking asylum or appealing a refusal in the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) were unable to secure legal aid representation in 2023-24.
Asylum Aid added: "We welcome the government’s decision to act. But a 10% increase in hourly rate (as announced by the Ministry of Justice) is not close to inflationary, given that rates were last increased in 1996. Further changes are still needed, including re-introducing legal aid for areas of immigration law that were removed from scope following the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (including family reunion and applications based on Article 8 and statelessness), but this is a positive step towards ensuring access to justice for survivors."
Duncan Lewis Solicitors also welcomed the increase. The firm brought a judicial review claim challenging the then Lord Chancellor's failure to increase rates for civil legal aid since 1996, which was settled in September on the basis that the new Lord Chancellor would make a decision on whether to increase rates for this work in November 2024.
In a statement, Duncan Lewis commented: "Our evidence in the claim showed that the current rates are hugely loss-making for Duncan Lewis and for other providers of legal aid, and that the consequence of these loss-making rates was that thousands of individuals with meritorious claims were unable to find representation for their matters of life or death importance. The rates proposed by the Lord Chancellor mean that this work will once again be sustainable for Duncan Lewis. We will be able to increase the number of cases that we take on and, in time, increase our capacity to represent individuals in need of assistance. We hope that other providers will also be in a position to do so, giving more people a fair chance at being able to secure representation."
Several new reports were also published today by the Ministry of Justice as part of its review of civil legal aid. You can access the reports here on GOV.UK.