Annual Report and Accounts

The following is a summary of our Annual Report and Accounts for 2023-24.

2023-24: How the Legal Aid Fund was spent

The chart on page 19 of the Annual Report details cash spent for legal aid, as this is the basis on which funding is received from the Scottish Government.

The total cost of legal assistance between April 2023 and March 2024 was £151 million.

This is a 12% increase on 2022-23 and a 16% increase on the pre-pandemic year of 2019-20.

Due to the demand led nature of the Legal Aid Fund, the budget from Scottish Government is not capped. In 2023-24, a combination of fee increases and increased demand (some of which stemmed from the clearance of system backlogs elsewhere in the Justice sector) caused a much higher than anticipated spend across Legal Aid.

Judicare: Civil Legal Assistance

Civil judicare funding was distributed to support people in the following case types.

Judicare: Criminal Legal Assistance

Criminal judicare funding was distributed in the following aid types.

Judicare: Children’s Legal Assistance

Children’s judicare funding was distributed in the following aid types.

Our Administration budget is distributed across three main Directorates and a central team comprising the office of the Principal Legal Advisor which provides legal support and advice across the organisation.

Our main costs are related to activity in assessing the applications and accounts we receive and corporate services to support the organisation. This includes our own in house technical team to assist with and develop our Legal Aid Online platform as the main interface with solicitors for application and account processing.

As the chart above shows, a significant amount of administrative expenditure (£5.8m) is directed at ensuring legal aid expenditure is in accordance with prevailing statutory provisions, regulations, fee tables and taxation standards.

To assess performance in applications we use the following key performance indicators (KPIs):

• time to take the first decision (First decision average duration)
• the percent of applications we can grant first time (First decision % granted)
• the level of rework that is required (% First decision with subsequent further work).

The equivalent KPIs in accounts are:

• time to pay an initial account (Average calendar days to bank)
• the percent of accounts we pay in full (% paid in full)
• the level of negotiation that is required (Ratio of negotiations to initial assessments).

Our performance across these indicators, compared to last year, is set out below. In 2023-24 the number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) remained unchanged from 2022-23. The performance figure is presented as the number of months that we either met or bettered the benchmark.

Further details on our KPIs are available in the full 2023-24 Annual Report (pages 24 -26). The latest operational performance overview reports for 2023-24 and previous years are available on our website.

We have been developing a Customer Insight Strategy:

• An equality impact assessed strategy will be published in early 2024-25 which will enable us to better target changes to our procedures and inform our indicators of performance.

We continued our Guidance on the Administration of Legal Assistance (GALA) project:

• After a four-year programme of publishing equality assessed policy statements, internal decision-makers’ guidance and revised external guidance, we have moved this work onto a business-as-usual footing.

We have considered improvements to the assessment of financial eligibility:

• We delivered equality impact assessed policy advice for consideration by Scottish Government on ways in which standard income and capital allowances are managed in the assessment of financial eligibility.

We have been reviewing delivery models for our direct legal services to respond to contextual changes:

• We reviewed the operation of our Solicitor Contact Line and are trialling new ways of working to inform future delivery models as well as identify ways in which to attract and retain talent; this has included offering work based learning and internship opportunities to diploma students to raise awareness of our work and attract talent.

We have carried out a review of our staff pay and grading structures:

• The review creates a pay structure that is fair, equitable and consistent for everyone, with the revised pay grade and structure approved by Scottish Government and staff advised of evaluation outcomes in March 2024.

We have developed a 12-month leadership programme for senior managers:

• The programme was launched in February 2024 with various interactive sessions to help reflect, develop and transform ways of working.

We have been developing our approach to workforce planning to ensure our staff have the skills and resources needed to deliver our future responsibilities:

• Methodology agreed for our approach to corporate workforce plan, which will be developed fully in 2024-25.

We have contributed to Scottish Government’s Research Advisory Group on legal aid payments:

• We have sat on the advisory panel and provided input to the tender specification process, with Scottish Government stating that it intends to reform legal aid in Scotland, and we are continuing to assist with advice on options for reform to enable Ministers to make decisions about the future.

We have developed a Communications Strategy and are developing a Data Analytics Strategy:

• We launch our communications strategy in February 2024 to help us achieve the delivery of our 2023-26 Corporate Plan, and after the project scoping phase is complete, we will launch our data analytics strategy in 2024-25.