Government of Jersey

Funding for Legal Aid (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey and published on 21 March 2025.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

Request 685615574

1 How many applications for funding for legal aid have been made to the relevant authorities in each of the last ten years and, of these, how many have been approved and how many refused?

2 What is the total cost of legal aid funding to the Jersey taxpayer in each of the last ten years?

Response

1 Legal Aid applications are made to the Acting Bâtonnier at the Law Society in the first instance via the Legal Aid Jersey website. The Judicial Greffe hold annual statistics provided by the Acting Bâtonnier as follows:

Year	Number of annual Applications	Number of applications approved	Number of applications refused
2022 (1^st April onwards)	414	371	43
2023	619	521	98
2024	631	526	105
2025 to Feb 7th	Information not held by the Judicial Greffe	Information not held by the Judicial Greffe	Information not held by the Judicial Greffe

This does not include Public Law Children cases or Mental Health Tribunal cases, as these matters are funded from Government-approved payment schemes that do not fall under legal aid. Neither are payments from the Legal Aid Vote as these are payments made by the Judicial Greffe for disbursements such as medical expert reports or interpreters fees. Applications made to the Judicial Greffier for a discretionary contribution towards legal fees in exceptional cases are also not legal aid payments and are therefore excluded.

2 Legal aid funding has only existed in its current form since April 2022. Prior to this lawyers and Advocates were required to work on a rota system and on a ‘pro bono’ basis. In certain circumstances legal teams were able to claim partial expenses for a contribution towards their fees from the court. We are unable to provide a response for the full ten years as this would exceed the time allowed under regulations and Article 16 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law applies.

We are only able to provide financial information relating to the costs of Criminal cases from April 2022 onwards under the new system. These costs are in respect of cases dealt with by the Royal Court, Magistrate’s Court and Youth Court. Costs that are not included are Duty Advocate / Lawyer costs (as no legal aid certificates are issued), exceptional applications, disbursements, inquests or discretionary costs.

Legal aid costs including accruals	£
April – December 2022	542,600
January – December 2023	1,438,461
January – December 2024	1,799,250
1 January - 7 February 2025	76,160

Articles applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.