.
LAA staff facing axe in bid to slash costs
More redundancies are planned at the Legal Aid Agency. LAG understands that the staff were told this just before Christmas. The Ministry of Justice has confirmed to LAG that it is continuing to run a voluntary redundancy scheme, but it ‘will carefully manage this to make sure frontline delivery is not affected and that there are sufficient staff in business-critical roles’.
At the moment, there are just over 1,450 staff employed at the agency, which currently spends nearly £110m a year on administration. The agency is expected to cut its administrative costs by 50 per cent over the next four years. LAG understands that the LAA wants to make a further 220 redundancies.
Changes at Legal Action
This is the last issue of Legal Action under Fiona Bawdon’s award-winning editorship.
In the 18 months that Fiona has been editor, she implemented a redesign, introduced new features, including regular columnists and the popular Use it or lose it series, and increased the amount of news, comment and opinion, to put Legal Action at the heart of the legal aid debate.
The changes she made were recognised in September 2015 when Legal Action won the Halsbury legal journalism award. The Halsbury Legal Awards’ judges praised Legal Action’s ‘small and hugely talented team for reinvention’, its ‘unmatched commitment to publicly funded law’, and ‘insightful and exceptional reporting’.
Fiona combined her editorship of Legal Action with campaigning work for the charity Just for Kids Law, and Act for the Act, which she co-founded in May 2015, to defend the Human Rights Act. She is also founder and co-organiser of the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards and will continue to work in this capacity with LAG, which acts as media partner to the awards.
A new editor will be announced in due course.
Fiona’s departure is not the only change at LAG this month, as the group now has a new home. It has moved from its base in Aldgate to offices in the heart of the legal community: 48 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JF. LAG’s email addresses and phone numbers remain unchanged (see page 2 for full contact details).