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<p>Information on legal representation (including the number of Litigants in Person)
is published in Family Courts Statistics Quarterly with further information on legal
representation status of applicants and respondents by case type:<br> <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2022"
target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2022</a>.</p><p>Information
on the number of disposals and average time to first definitive disposal, broken down
by parties with legal representation and case type is routinely published by the Ministry
of Justice and can be found via Family Court Statistics Quarterly: <br> <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2022"
target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2022</a>.</p><p>The
Review of Civil Legal Aid will consider the civil legal aid system in its entirety;
from how services are procured, how well the current system works for users and how
civil legal aid impacts the wider justice system.</p><p>Whilst the Review is not looking
specifically at addressing delays in the family courts, more widely we are maximising
sitting days to work through the outstanding caseload. In the family court, we sat
to our highest ever level in 2021 – just under 56,000 days in public law and just
under 83,000 days in private law. This is 2% higher than our sitting day levels in
2020 for public law and 16% higher than our sitting days in 2020 for private law.</p><p>We
have significantly increased funding to improve waiting times in the family courts.
This includes increasing funding to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support
Service (Cafcass) by £8.4 million this financial year to deal with more open active
cases.</p><p>We are modernising our systems through the HMCTS Reform programme to
improve efficiency by removing unnecessary forms and duplication.</p><p>We have made
greater use of fee-paid and part-time judges by lifting the number of days that fee-paid
judges can sit.</p><p>We have also made provisions to ensure that fee-paid judiciary
from elsewhere in England and Wales can now hear suitable cases remotely, to increase
the judicial resource available to hear cases from London and the South East and reduce
delays in those regions.</p><p>Legal aid is available in certain family matters, such
as public family law cases which fall under the Children Act 1989. These types of
cases include proceedings relating to whether a child should be taken into care or
who should have parental responsibility or contact.</p><p>In March 2022, we published
a detailed consultation on legal aid means-testing arrangements. The consultation
proposed a broad suite of changes to the civil and criminal legal aid means test,
with the aim of ensuring access to justice.</p><p>The Department for Education is
working with the Public Law Working Group sub-group on care proceedings reform to
bring learning from Family Drug and Alcohol Courts and other problem-solving approaches
into public law proceedings, to make proceedings less adversarial and improve parents’
engagement in the process.</p>
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