New stats are out for Legal Aid and Family Courts here.

For the period Oct – Dec 2014 the proportion of s10 exceptional legal aid applications that were granted is much improved, and is now at approximately 25% (previously under 4% for the period April 13 – Mar 14 and only c1% for family cases).

But dig a bit deeper and the improvement is not anything like as marked as it at first appears. The 25% figure is for s10 applications in all areas, not just family. A significantly better rate of approval for inquests in particular masks the fact that in family only 13 of 104 applications were granted. So the rate is something more like 12%.

More worryingly the number of applications (all types overall) is down 31% on the same period last year, according to the release. However, rather unhelpfully I can’t locate the statistics for the same period last year on the gov.uk website (try as I might). The best I can do is to make a comparison with the period Apr 13 – Mar 14. In that period there were an average of 379 applications per quarter of which 204 (54%) were family. By contrast family applications now make up only 37% of all applications. And the total number of applications is down by 26% compared with the average per quarter in that earlier period, whilst family applications are now 48% lower than than in the earlier period.

So it looks to me as if the picture for exceptional legal aid is improving in some areas post the Gudanaviciene appeal, but that people are not bothering to apply for exceptional funding in family cases in such great numbers as they initially were, and that whilst the hit rate is better, it is not by much.