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The (External) Office of National Statistics (ONS) has released a new dataset relating to Legal Help and Help at Court Claimants. The information provides details of both the number and type of Legal Aid cases completed in England and Wales during the period 1 April 2003 to 31 March 2004. Information is provided at Lower-level Super Output Areas (LSOA). The national dataset can be obtained from the National Statistics (External) Neighbourhood Statistics section by choosing Topics, Access to Services, Key Regeneration Related Statistics, Legal Help and Help at Court Claimants (or try (External) this direct link to the data ).
The Legal Services Commission (LSC), an executive non-departmental public body reporting to the Department of Constitutional Affairs, provides information on the number and type of Legal Aid Services, though does not itself provide legal advice. It is the statutory responsibility of the LSC to maintain and develop the Community Legal Services (CLS) General Civil Contracts (which provides a first point of call for legal help), to fund legal and advice services in England and Wales, to identify where there is unmet need, and to develop suppliers and innovative services to meet priority needs. The information is collected primarily for administrative/financial purposes and is commonly used to measure the level of legal advice supply and demand. It is important to note, however, that the data cannot be taken to represent the level of need for legal services. Also, the data refer to the number of "matters" completed over the period; they do not refer to the number of individuals in receipt of Legal Aid under the GCC scheme. It is possible that one person could have a number of matters that were legally aided during the year. Alternatively, an individual may have one matter dealt with by several different advice suppliers each of whom has made an independent claim.
The legal matters (all non-criminal) contained within the dataset include the following categories:
Legal Aid (or more formally, "Legal Help & Help at Court") is a scheme under which members of the public can be entitled to publicly funded Civil (non-criminal) legal advice provided they satisfy both a means and merits case. The scheme is managed by the Community Legal Service that brings together legal aid solicitors, Citizens Advice Bureaux, Law Centres, local authority services and other organisations in local networks to ensure that people get information and advice about their legal rights and help with enforcing them. The provision and use of such legal advice services has been recognised as being crucial to helping people escape social exclusion by assisting them to tackle and range of social welfare problems in areas such as debt, employment, domestic violence and housing. Many Legal Aid users come from poor, vulnerable groups who could not, without financial help, afford to get the appropriate level of assistance they would require to uphold their basic civil and social rights and entitlements, thus preventing them from spiralling into further social and economic exclusion.
The importance given to Legal Aid at both the local and national level is reflected by the level of funding allocated to the various Legal Aid schemes, estimated at £2bn per annum, and in additional funding via direct investment to advice agencies from sources including the DCA, the Home Office, the Department of Trade & Industry and local authorities.
In the financial year 2003/2004 there were nearly 20,200 legal aid case matters in the Lancashire sub-region, equivalent to 14.1 cases per 1,000 population. This rate was marginally higher than the England and Wales average (13.6) but below that of the wider North West Region (15.5). As shown in Table 1, Matrimonial matters provide by far the largest case load accounting for nearly a half of all cases, followed by Welfare Benefit and Debt, accounting for 13% and 12% of the total respectively. In all three instances rates per 1,000 population were a third or more higher in Lancashire than in the UK. Amongst other matters attracting significant numbers of legal aid cases, both Housing and Immigration (and especially asylum) had rates per 1,000 population well below the national average.
Within the sub-region rates of legal aid cases vary widely from just 6.1 cases per 1,000 population in Fylde to a rate more than four times as high in Burnley (25.1). As shown in Figure 1, in all districts Matrimonial matters are the largest single category (rising to 69% of all cases in Hyndburn for example). Given the means tested nature of Legal Aid, local factors such as the distribution of household incomes probably influence the geographical spread of some of the case matters. Welfare matters, for instance rise to nearly 18% of cases in Preston and to 21% in Burnley whilst Debt matters account for nearly 23% of cases in Pendle. Immigration matters are most pronounced in areas like Blackburn, Burnley, Pendle and Preston that have significant shares of ethnic minority populations.
The top and bottom ranked MSOAs in Lancashire are shown in Table 2 whilst Figure 2 illustrates the geographical distribution of the legal aid rate across the sub-region. The overall pattern accords closely with the distribution relating to various measures of deprivation, a hardly surprising feature considering the means-tested nature of legal aid. In the most extreme case, MSOA003 in Burnley District, covering the Daneshouse & Stoneyholme area, has a legal aid case rate of nearly 70 per 1,000 people (rising to over 100 per thousand in a constituent part of its area, LSOA003D).
This page was compiled by Peter Kivell .
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