Policies and guidance published for assessing income in civil financial assessment

We’ve published our policies and decision-makers’ guidance (DMG) for assessing income in Civil Legal Aid as part of our GALA project.

The policies and guidance on our GALA website are intended primarily for our decision-makers for:

• assessing the factors we take into consideration in applications and accounts
• detailing the information we take into account and the decisions we take as a result of that information.

As part of the GALA project, our existing legal aid guidance for solicitors on the SLAB website is reviewed and updated, as appropriate.

It remains the primary legal aid reference for solicitors and has links to published policy statements or decision-makers’ guidance, if you need that at any time.

What does the new GALA content cover?

The new policy statements and DMG are all in relation to the different sources of income a person concerned may have and how we treat these in our financial eligibility assessment in Civil Legal Aid.

The following policy statements are available on the GALA website:

• Computation period for disposable income
• Income – wage or salaried employment
• Income – benefits or other government payments
• Income – other sources
• Income – discretionary disregards
• Passporting benefits

Our approach to how we treat these sources of income is not changing.

Our legal aid guidance, the Keycard and Eligibility estimators have been updated simply to improve on the information previously given.

More information

Please contact Kim Blance, Civil Finance Senior Specialist

T: 0131 240 2091

E: blanceki@slab.org.uk