The Legal Services Commissioner’s decision and response to the review of the criminal fixed fees is now published. The review aimed to gather information on how the fees are working in practice and to identify any issues or gaps in the schedules.
Increases in Government funding to enable the Legal Services Commissioner to revise the criminal legal aid fees will be staged over three years from 2016 to 2018.
Three new separate criminal legal aid fee schedules have been developed for each financial year as the changes are gradually introduced. The financial years 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19 will see a number of fee increases, many fees made repeatable, a revised way the case management memorandum is treated by legal aid, hearing time separated from preparation for a hearing and many gaps addressed in the schedules.
The first set of changes will be introduced on Monday, 4 July 2016. All new grants of legal aid received after this date will attract the new fee schedules. Existing grants under the 1 July 2013 fee schedules can only move to the 4 July 2016 schedules if an amendment to grant is approved for any activity. See:
Criminal fixed fees – review responses and final decisions [PDF, 1.3 MB]
Fee schedules – 4 July 2016 [PDF, 611 KB]
Fee schedules – 3 July 2017 [PDF, 737 KB]
Fee schedules – 2 July 2018 [PDF, 753 KB]
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