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Modernisation and the continued development of legal aid is helping people receive the high quality legal help they need to deal with a wide range of problems, according to the Board's annual report for 2005-2006.
The report says that the last year saw significant progress with development work and further improvements in service performance for applicants.
In 2005-2006 the number of legal assistance grants fell 4% to 411,290. This is the fifth year in a row grants have fallen. Most of the fall was due to less civil and criminal advice and assistance being granted by solicitors. There were also fewer applications and grants of summary criminal legal aid, the first fall in six years.
Spending on legal aid in 2005-2006 fell for the first time in seven years to £147.9 million. This was£4.6 million, or 3%, less than the year before. Expenditure on criminal legal assistance fell by £5.0 million. Reasons for the fall include fewer very expensive cases than the year before and a reduction in the amount spent for solemn criminal cases. Another factor was the impact of reforms to the criminal justice system and legal aid system.
For more on the year read:
* a summary of the year in our Annual Review
* a more detailed commentary on the year, full statistical tables and annual accounts in our Annual Report
* information on what we paid to all solicitor firms, advocates and solicitor advocates in 2005-2006 in payments made
* news release for journalists summarising key developments and also a list of the 20 highest payments made.
If you want to find out what happened in other years, visit our Annual Report archive.
If you want to read about our future plans, read our Corporate Plan.
