Legal Aid

Reforms on Crown Court eligibility and borderline merits

PUBLISHED February 11, 2014
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Key reforms under legal aid transformation programme go live from 27 January 2014

Two important reforms which are part of the legal aid transformation programme go live from Monday 27 January.
These are:
  
1. Borderline merits ? removing legal aid for civil cases with borderline prospects of success 
2. Crown Court eligibility ? introducing a financial eligibility threshold
The threshold means that any defendant with an annual disposable household income of £37,500 or more would be ineligible for legal aid in the Crown Court, subject to review on hardship grounds. 

Training

Training to help you understand these changes went live on 8 January. The details can be found on the Provider Training website ? see below. 
To access the training you will need to register on the site and complete all the required fields.
Anyone who has an LAA office account number and a practising certificate number should have them to hand when registering. If you do not have these you can still register.
The training consists of a welcome pack and three modules covering the changes:
  • overview to 27 January 2014 changes
  • borderline merits ? 27 January 2014
  • Crown Court eligibility ? 27 January 2014

More changes

The legal aid transformation programme will continue to implement further planned changes throughout 2014.
Updates will be given when:
  • legislation is laid in Parliament
  • training is made available
  • new reforms go live
This will ensure we keep you up to date as soon as we have information to share.

Further information and forms

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