Legal aid support options aired as further talks held

Legal aid solicitors still seeking payouts from the Scottish Government's resilience fund are being consulted on options for allocating the unspent balance of the fund, ahead of a further meeting with Government later this week.

Only £2.3m of the £9m pledged by ministers at the turn of the year has been awarded to applicant legal firms struggling to survive due to the restrictions on court business over the past year. The options paper reveals that 288 applications were received, "representing fewer than half of the potentially eligible active firms", but many applications were unsuccessful and other firms were offered hundreds of pounds having submitted claims for thousands. It is alleged that the criteria applied by the Scottish Legal Aid Board in assessing applications were too restrictive.

The first option now presented would adjust the criteria previously applied by using actual instead of projected business levels for the latter part of the reference period, and applying a 10% discount to the projected value of business started in 2020-21 to reflect uncertainties of outcome. It is said that this would increase the number of assessed grants from 94 to 128, and the total paid out from £2.3m to £4m. But it would not assist firms who did not previously apply, and would still leave many who applied without an award.

With or without that option being taken up, ministers suggest that a new fund could be set up to deliver the undistributed balance, based on criteria to be devised. This would require a further application process because of the need to account for use of public money, and the scheme would likely take a couple of months to develop.

A third possibility would be to bring forward the further planned fee increase of 5% due to come in next year. "Although this option would not in itself deliver the remaining funds, we thought it was an option worth seeking views on", the paper states. "It would bring forward the further increase by around six months and this would have financial benefit to all legal aid providers and would put in place higher fees at a time when business would be increasing."

Again it would not be implemented until after the summer, when regulations can be laid in the Parliament. These could also include the criminal fee reforms, "subject to agreement".

The paper, available on the Glasgow Bar Association website, was discussed at a meeting last week between the Government, Law Society of Scotland and bar associations. A further meeting will be held this Thursday, 27 May, with soundings being taken from practitioners meantime.