Recommendation 18

We asked MoJ what work it had done to better understand the effects of its legal aid reforms on local authorities and their legal advice services. MoJ said that it has surveyed local authorities to understand where they were providing additional legal advice and why, but it told us that it did not have a high response rate to the survey. It explained that while the response rate was low, responses showed that there may be several reasons for local authorities to be providing advice, including that the issue or individual’s circumstances may be outside the scope of legal aid. It also stressed that it had done a lot of work with MHCLG, particularly around the Renters’ Rights Bill, which may create more legal disputes, and how to ensure that provision of legal aid is in the right places to meet this demand. We asked MoJ whether these conversations had changed anything for local government. However, in response it only stated that it had rolled out a new pathfinder pilot in family courts which it said should help to reduce burdens on local government as a specialist worker will point families to legal advice that it now funds.37 34 HC Committee of Public Accounts, Value for money from legal aid, Thirty-Third Report of Session 2023-24, HC 481, 20 May 2024. 35 Law Society of England and Wales (MOJ0002): Public Law Project (MOJ0004) 36 HMT, Treasury Minutes, 5 September 2024 37 Qq 37-41 13