Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the ability of people living in rural areas to access justice.

Based on the most recent data available, the table below shows how many firms (and where a firm has multiple branches, the total number of offices) were active in any given year providing legal aid services in criminal matters.

Numbers of both firms and offices have fluctuated due to a number of factors, including mergers and acquisitions, trends in the rates of criminal offending, and the impact of other policies and market conditions.

The Legal Aid Agency measures capacity according to the type of scheme in question. For criminal legal aid, all Criminal Justice System Areas over England and Wales have firms of solicitors operating under a criminal legal aid contract, in addition to approximately 250 Duty Solicitor schemes providing advice and representation in Police Stations and Magistrates courts. The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) monitors capacity across criminal legal aid contracts on an ongoing basis. Where issues are identified, the LAA takes action to ensure there is ongoing availability of criminal legal advice for the public.

For civil legal aid, there is at least one firm operating in each ‘Procurement Area’ providing services in every category of law, save for the ‘Housing and Debt’ category. Of the 134 Procurement Areas for this category, 4 do not currently have a provider holding a Housing and Debt contract, representing over 97% coverage across England and Wales. The Legal Aid Agency has since undertaken a further tender to secure provision in the remaining areas. In addition to the Civil Legal Advice Telephone Service, offering legal services in a range of issues to those who need it, we are establishing a £5m innovation fund to help people access legal support wherever they are in England and Wales.