Keeping up to date with legal aid policyLASPOLASPOLASPO
21.1Legal aid practitioners must keep an eye on policy changes to the scheme and how these might impact on your business/service. This chapter gives a round-up of the most significant developments of the last two years and attempts to predict what the Government and the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) intend to do next. Unfortunately, the one certainty in the world of legal aid policy is that they never seem to want to opt for a steady state.
21.2Firms and other legal aid providers are still adjusting to the impact of Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012 which introduced cuts to the scope of civil legal aid which radically altered the scheme from 1 April 2013. The section on civil legal includes a discussion on the continuing impact of LASPO and the other major developments in civil legal aid policy.
21.3Criminal legal aid was largely spared under LASPO changes and the headline news here is the successful campaign by criminal legal aid lawyers to fight off the imposition of competitive tendering. The main problems being faced by criminal legal aid practitioners are the continuing falling volumes of work and recent proposals from the Government to reduce fees for Crown Court cases.