Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many civil legal aid offices with a civil legal aid contract started zero cases by each (a) local authority and (b) area of law in the (i) 2022-23, (ii) 2023-24 and (iii) 2024-25 financial year.

The requested information can be found in the attached table.

Data for 2024-2025 is a year-to-date figure reflective of the work reported between 1 April 2024 to 31 January, inclusive. As such it is not directly comparable with 2022-23 and 2023-24. Please note that the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) commissions and monitors the provision of legal aid services by ‘Procurement Area’ rather than by local authority. Procurement areas differ for different categories of law.

The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) publishes information about the number of providers and offices which hold a legal aid contract and number of legal aid offices completing work in each period as part of its official statistics [see tables 9.1-9.8].