About the civil simplification project
The Board has a civil simplification project underway and its primary aim is to reduce the complexity of the civil legal assistance process.
We know some solicitors find the process complex and have difficulty meeting the legislative requirements and complying with our policies and guidance. Some applicants have difficulty providing the documentation we need for the financial assessment and find the forms difficult to complete. Opponents also find the financial assessment difficult to understand when they try to make representations on financial grounds about an application for legal aid.
We are therefore engaged in a major review of our processes and forms to analyse what causes problems so that we can take remedial steps to improve systems and processes, produce better guidance and/or identify possible changes to legislation. There are certain changes – for example, to forms – that we can make: however, other changes might need changes to legislation. One of our functions is to advise Ministers and to make recommendations for changes to legislation; however, we have no direct control over what will be introduced or when that might take place. A key factor in this work is using new technologies: in particular, developing online systems to simplify and speed up the processing of applications and accounts.
The civil simplification project was launched back in October 2006 at the Joint Legal Aid Conference. Shortly afterwards we began a consultation phase which included focus group meetings with solicitors and a survey of applicants and opponents. We identified a number of areas to work on and since then we have introduced a number of changes to help simplify aspects of civil legal assistance.
We currently have a number of projects underway and are working on significant changes that we are phasing in. We completed the first stage in March 2009, and stage 2 in September 2009. Click on the links below to get details of the broad changes to be made in each phase.
PHASE 1 – March 2009
Stage 1
- new civil application forms
- stage reporting
- proposals for road shows for the profession
Stage 2
- online applications for civil applications
PHASE 2 – Implementation due around spring 2010
- improving the way we assess financial eligibility
- better arrangements for dealing with special urgency cases
- Supplier support scheme
PHASE 3 – Work still to start
- Review of payment of money (in cases where property is recovered) into the Fund
- Review of interfaces across advice and assistance and civil legal aid.
TAPERING IN FINANCIAL ELIGIBILITY
As part of our civil simplification project, major changes were introduced to the financial eligibility test on income for civil legal aid from 7 April 2009. Up to a million more people are now eligible as financial eligibility has been extended to those with disposable incomes of up to £25,000. Also from this date, a tapered system of contributions for civil legal aid was introduced.
For more information go to our mailshots of 25 March and 4 April 2009.
For more information about the simplification project, please contact Derek Arthur, Simplification Manager, on 0131 240 2069 or at arthurde@slab.org.uk.
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