The maps, updated this week, are compiled from the Legal Aid Agency’s directory of legal aid providers. They show the availability of legal aid providers in housing, welfare, education, community care and immigration practice areas across different parts of the country. Availability is particularly sparse in the South West, North, North East and East, in Wales, and in the South and South East outside of London.
According to figures gathered by the Law Society, 53 million people (90%) across England and Wales do not have access to a local education legal aid provider, and 50 million people (85%) have no access to a local welfare legal aid provider.
Some 42 million people (71%) have no access to a local community care legal aid provider, and more than 37 million people (63%) do not have access to a local immigration and asylum legal aid provider.
In the area of housing, 26 million people (44%) can’t access a legal aid provider.
Law Society president Nick Emmerson said: ‘In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, this is a serious concern.
‘It would not take a huge sum of money in terms of overall public expenditure to tackle the crisis and the savings in other areas from solving people’s problems early would more than offset the cost.’
Law Society-commissioned research by Frontier Economics found 100% of housing legal aid providers are loss-making—published last week in the Law Society’s interim report, ‘Research on the sustainability of civil legal aid’. The full report, and the interactive maps, have been submitted to the Ministry of Justice’s call for evidence to its review of civil legal aid, which closed this week.
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