Redress for survivors’ regulations come into force 26 November

The Legal Aid and Advice and Assistance (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) (No. 2) Regulations 2021 come into force on 26 November 2021.

These regulations amend the relevant Advice and Assistance, Civil and Children’s Regulations by adding:

• any payments under Part 4 of the Redress for Survivors (Historical Child Abuse in Care (Scotland) Act 2021

to the list of payments which can be disregarded from the assessment of an applicant’s disposable income or capital in all types of legal assistance.

Regulation 2 amends the Advice and Assistance (Scotland) Regulations 1996 by providing that:

• these payments are disregarded in the assessment of an applicant’s disposable capital and income in respect of all forms of advice and assistance
• this also excludes such payments from bearing fees and outlays when forming part of any recovered or preserved property.

Regulation 3 amends the Civil Legal Aid (Scotland) Regulations 2002 by providing that:

• these payments are disregarded in the assessment of an applicant’s capital in respect of civil legal aid
• such payments are also excluded from bearing fees and outlays when forming part of any recovered or preserved property in proceedings.

Regulation 4 amends the Children’s Legal Assistance (Scotland) Regulations 2013 by providing that:

• these payments are disregarded in the assessment of an applicant’s capital.

These payments will be added to the list of disregarded payments shown in the Advice & Assistance and Civil and Children’s Keycards.

In addition, we will also disregard these payments where we assess financial eligibility for Summary, Solemn and Criminal Appeals legal aid using the undue hardship test.

We will be updating the relevant legal aid guidance on our website to reflect the amended regulations.

From 26 November you should not include these payments when assessing eligibility and should not include them in the relevant financial sections of the online applications for all types of legal assistance.

For further information, please contact:

Civil Legal aid: Cindy Morrice, Manager of Civil Finance  E: morriceci@slab.org.uk

Children’s Legal Aid: Wendy Dalgeish, Head of Civil and Children’s Legal Services  E: dalgleishwe@slab.org.uk

Criminal Legal Aid: Kingsley Thomas, Head of Criminal Legal Assistance  E: thomaski@slab.org.uk