Legal aid statistics quarterly: October to December 2024
Source: gov.uk (2025-03-27)

Activity in the legal aid system for England and Wales, including criminal and civil legal aid, family mediation, providers of legal aid and central funds payments.

Legal aid statistics bulletin presents statistics on the legal aid scheme administered by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) for England and Wales. This edition comprises the first release of statistics for the three month period from October to December 2024 and also provides the latest statement of figures for all earlier periods. This edition also includes figures on provider contracts, management information on Criminal Legal Aid Review measures and Civil claims for trafficking and modern slavery. These statistics are derived from data held by LAA, produced and published by Legal Aid Statistics team of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).

Data files the source for the key statistics on activity in the legal aid system for England and Wales in .csv (Comma delimited) format are published on Legal aid statistics: October to December 2024 data files (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/legal-aid-statistics-october-to-december-2024-data-files).

Link to Data visualisation tools (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/a-guide-to-legal-aid-statistics-in-england-and-wales/legal-aid-statistics-data-visualisation-tools), a web-based tools allowing the user to view and analyse charts and tables based on the published statistics.

Link to Legal aid management information (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/legal-aid-management-information) to understand latest workload volumes and expenditure on Criminal legal aid reform and Trafficking and modern slavery are also published.

Statistician’s comment

Expenditure in criminal legal aid has increased year on year, although over recent quarters we are seeing a levelling off of overall quarterly spend, this can be seen in the management information released alongside this report covering the criminal legal aid reform impacts. In the last few quarters, police station claim volumes have increased along with a corresponding increase in representation orders at the magistrates’ court. Expenditure in the police station and magistrates’ court increased in the latest quarter following this workload increase.

Overall, civil expenditure has been increasing over the last few years, driven by a rise in family law expenditure, with special children act claims the majority of this work. Other non-family workload has also increased, although not to the same extent, driven by immigration and housing work.

Pre-release

Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:

Ministry of Justice

Secretary of State for Justice, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Permanent Secretary, Head of Legal Aid Policy (2), Special Advisor Inbox, Legal Aid Policy Officials (9), Press Officers (4), Digital Officers (2), Private secretaries (5), Legal Aid Analysis (2)

Legal Aid Agency

Chief Executive, Chief Executive’s Office, Senior Commissioning Manager, Director of Finance Business Partnering, Service Development Managers (2), Exceptional and Complex Cases Workflow Co-ordinator, Change Manager