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Legal aid in regard to the criminal justice system has been featured heavily in the news recently, but unfortunately, not for all the good it’s doing…

On 7th September 2022, legal aid barristers that were working in the criminal justice sector gathered at Westminster to protest, voicing their concerns about the government’s disregard for their pay, and the impact this is and will continue to have on the criminal justice system in the UK.

This isn’t the first time that the state of criminal legal aid has been thrust into the spotlight over the last five or so years. While the gaps in the UK justice system have become crystal clear through the various news stories surrounding the strike, other coverage such as the anonymously authored book ‘The Secret Barrister’ are continuing to highlight just how much trouble the system is really in. 

While these stories are nothing new, and the problems that they outline are slowly becoming the ‘norm’, these gaps in the system are becoming increasingly hard to plug.

The problem with crime legal aid

What is perhaps an even bigger problem than this is that rural areas are suffering the most from limited and sometimes even no access to criminal legal aid. 

Perhaps the first step to identifying the crux of the problem is to recognise where the most at-risk areas are, and how much access those areas have to free legal support. That’s why ½Û×ÓÊÓƵ performed research into the state of legal aid deserts in the UK.

While there’s no one true definition for what qualifies as a legal aid desert, for the purpose of this study, it was determined by the volume of legal ‘incidents’ in a particular area, i.e. the demand, and by using the number of legal aid providers or clinics in a local authority, the legal aid supply was identified.

The legal demand was calculated based on supply per 10,000 people, to ensure smaller and larger population densities could be compared fairly – any local authorities that were within 15km of each other were deemed as sharing the same legal supply and demand. 

A criminal legal aid desert was then assigned to any local authority that fell in the bottom 10% of their area of the law, which was calculated by diving the supply by the demand in that area. 

By attributing the number of ‘incidents’ in a given police force area (PFA) to the different local authorities based on their population, the criminal legal aid for that area was calculated.

Top 15 legal aid deserts for crime:

1) Swale
2) Tunbridge Wells
3) Ribble Valley
4) Rutland
5) Mendip
6) East Hampshire
7) Test Valley
8) East Cambridgeshire
9) Huntingdonshire
10) Derbyshire Dales
11) North Norfolk
12) Copeland
13) Babergh
14) Horsham
15) Cotswold

Supply for criminal legal aid is remarkably low

Of the three key legal aid sectors that were studied for this report – housing, family, and criminal – criminal legal aid was identified as having the least supply across the nation. Even the five best-served local authorities only have 0.89 clinics per 1,000 incidents. The crime legal deserts in the bottom 10% had 0 clinics per 1,000 incidents.

Overall, 2.12m people live in legal aid deserts. What’s interesting is that the South West exhibits the highest number of criminal legal aid deserts (8), then the South East (5), which is then closely followed by the East of England (4). This greatly goes against the stereotype that central and northern regions have less access to legal aid clinics and services. 

Fintan Walker, Legal Advice Centre (LAC) Manager at the University of Manchester, and practicing criminal defence solicitor states:

"The strain on the legal aid system is becoming more noticeable. The number of firms relinquishing their legal aid contacts, predominantly criminal, has risen, even in large and highly populated areas such as Greater Manchester. Firms that are continuing to provide a legally aided service are struggling to recruit young lawyers due to noncompetitive salaries. This has led to more pressure on the pro bono sector to fill the gaps."

If you want to learn more about legal aid deserts in the UK, whether that’s criminal, housing or family, then .